9 ms·

Sometimes I think this sounds conspiratorial, and surely isn't happening. Who has the time or money to pay 5 people to just go around harassing and stalking peo

Sometimes I think this sounds conspiratorial, and surely isn't happening. Who has the time or money to pay 5 people to just go around harassing and stalking people for political gain only? Then I remember the story of the lady in East Germany who, after it fell, managed to get the Stasi records that finally proved that yes, they had been stalking her, harassing her, and spying on her. They would do things like wait until she went into a store to buy something, then let the air out of her bicycle tires. Just stupid little harassing things like that, so that if she complained about it to her family they'd think she was crazy. Next time you hear some nutcase on the street talking about things like this to whoever will listen... ponder things like this.

daenz 5y ago
Reminds me of Gang stalking[0]. It always seems to happen to people who present themselves as generally not very mentally healthy, but sometimes you have to wonder. If you were the very unlucky target of some deniable, organized harassment effort, it would certainly take its toll on your mental health. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking
- brailsafe 5y ago
  relevant Onion https://youtu.be/FzoXQKumgCw https://youtu.be/FzoXQKumgCw
  - vmception 5y ago
    tangentially relevant Onion https://www.theonion.com/police-flip-through-unsolved-crimes-to-see-what-else-th-1848424844 https://www.theonion.com/police-flip-through-unsolved-crimes...
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      Damn. I was in jail with a lot of very mentally sick people, and this hits too close to home!
    - brailsafe 5y ago
      Tangentially related indeed, though all the really funny writers must have gone to Clickhole when that launched
    - alasdair_ 5y ago
      Irrelevant onion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_onion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_onion
- stefan_ 5y ago
  The Stasi term for this was Zersetzung: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung
  - wswope 5y ago
    You may want to dig into gangstalking as a cultural phenomenon before you legitimize it with that equivalency. This is not cherry-picked; I just went to the subreddit and found a relatively recent post: https://old.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/comments/tf2xd0/they_are_ruining_my_life/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/comments/tf2xd0/they_a.... (Spoilers: the number of people in amphetamine psychosis is several orders of magnitude larger than the number of victims of targeted government harassment.)
    - mardifoufs 5y ago
      Yeah, if you look at the post history of the people posting there you will see a lot of posts about meth. Or maybe their mental health is what led them to meth in the first place, because you'd think the meth induced psychosis would wane off over time. But for most of them the delusions keep getting stronger and it can last for year. It's really heartbreaking and the entire paranoid concept of gangstalking makes helping them very very difficult
- sneak 5y ago
  Worth noting that if you actually ARE being tailed by an organized and well-resourced group, they will frequently use a team of people to do so, time and circumstances permitting.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    This is probably why it's very hard to help someone who is under legitimately delusional feelings of gang stalking, because those who legitimately are and those who are delusional are likely to look the same to outsiders, and will always be considered delusional. If a person is suffering from strong enough paranoia to classify themselves as a "targeted individual", then they've probably walked through the scenario that they might be crazy but also realized that if their paranoia is accurate, then they would also have appeared to be crazy. It's a vicious cycle.
    - TechBro8615 5y ago
      I feel similarly about describing political aspirants as narcissistic or sociopathic based on their "delusions of grandeur" – what about when they actually become president? Not so delusional anymore, I guess? It calls into question the validity of such a diagnosis in the first place, as anything more than a measurement of deviance from some arbitrary and counterfactually ambiguous statistical mean. It's almost as if the entire field of psychiatry harbors delusions of grandeur...
      - alphabettsy 5y ago
        "delusions of grandeur" can mean many things. Someone who thinks they’re a genius and wins a popularity contest is not now provably a genius. Someone who believes themselves to be the fastest athlete is not so when their opponent falls down and they win the race.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Don't whatever you do go here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/
  - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    I tried to go there, but I was directed to install the app and there was no option to continue browsing on the web. Reddit dark patterns have come to a point where they are literally disabling the web frontend for mobile users?
    - leoqa 5y ago
      Add the old subdomain to avoid the mobile stuff. The link is a subreddit of people complaining about being stalked and then trailing off into other conspiracies. Edit: old.reddit.com/r/gangstalking
davidb_ 5y ago
Any chance you have a source for the bicycle tire story? I'm keen to read more about it (and similar stories).
- IncRnd 5y ago
  The East German Police after WWII had a policy of Zersetzung, their type of petty, persistant psychological harassment that disrupted people's lives. I'm curious, did they stop teaching in school that Zersetzung happened in East Germany in the context of WWII? I was taught in High School about that.
  - davidb_ 5y ago
    I was educated in the US and took AP US History in high school. I don't recall a specific reference to Zersetzung within that curriculum, but the idea that life in East Germany was difficult due to Stasi oppression was covered. I don't recall specific examples like the story I asked about though (besides my own extracurricular references from movies/books).
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      Thanks for the complete answer! It doesn't actually answer what I wanted to know, but it does answer exactly what I asked.
- alisonatwork 5y ago
  There are several stories like this at the Stasi Museum[0]. Highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in Berlin. The Jugend Widerstands (Youth Resistance) Museum[1] has some interesting stories about life in the DDR too. [0] https://stasimuseum.de/ https://stasimuseum.de/ [1] https://widerstandsmuseum.de/ https://widerstandsmuseum.de/
- philovivero 5y ago
  Did a quick search and didn't find it. All I remember is it was written up in a rather major publication some years ago talking about the fall of Stasi. While trying to find my source, I did find out Putin was in East Germany when the wall fell, and was working for KGB. Along with Stasi, Putin burned so much evidence of their wrongdoing, it broke the furnace. So I guess Putin was a questionable fellow even back in the 1980's and 1990's!
dralley 5y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1HWNcLDK88&t=5614s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1HWNcLDK88&t=5614s
Sakos 5y ago
There are a lot of cases of Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Saudi, etc. dissidents or critics being targeted overseas. I'm not sure why it's a surprise to anyone or why people think it doesn't happen.
- synergy20 5y ago
  To make sure the qualify of the brain-wash process for the whole country, which is the foundation for those countries' stability, dissidents must be eliminated or harassed enough so they shut-up, wherever they might be.
- tsol 5y ago
  Agreed. It seems naive to think "of course that wouldn't actually happen" without any real evidence except your own incredulity. Why shouldn't they harass people in small ways? It's cheap, annoying, and minor enough that most people will just brush it all off as coincidences. You obtain your goal of punishing those who got on your wrong side, without having to worry about attracting too much attention. Hell it doesn't even have to be state actors, if anyone here pisses off someone with too much money, it wouldn't be hard to hire someone anonymously on craigslist to harass you. People have done a lot worse for a lot less money
- anonporridge 5y ago
  puts on tinfoil hat Because the belief that this kind of gang stalking never happens and people who think that they are getting harassed like this are always crazy is a psyop designed to make sure the public is more susceptible to the rare, but highly effective practice.
noobermin 5y ago
That reminds me of COINTELPRO, and how the FBI tried to get MLK to commit suicide by sending him a harassing black mailing letter. It's amazing how states particularly when they have apparatuses that can go rouge or are even actually encouraged by the government like the Stasi were go to ridiculous lengths to harass people they find politically inconvenient.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  that is true, but that was more than fifty years ago..
  - exhilaration 5y ago
    This was posted yesterday in one of the comments on HN if you want a better idea of what the FBI does these days: https://casetext.com/analysis/how-to-spot-the-informant-at-your-local-mosque https://casetext.com/analysis/how-to-spot-the-informant-at-y...
  - skrtskrt 5y ago
    I'm sure they've cleaned up their act by now! Surely they aren't during stuff like that, and "thwarting" "terrorist plots" where the "conspirators" are FBI assets themselves
    - bpiche 5y ago
      what are you referring to? the Boston bombing?
      - evan_ 5y ago
        https://theintercept.com/2017/09/03/the-fbi-pressured-a-lonely-young-man-into-a-bomb-plot-he-tried-to-back-out-now-hes-serving-life-in-prison/ https://theintercept.com/2017/09/03/the-fbi-pressured-a-lone... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/magazine/fbi-international-terrorism-informants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/magazine/fbi-internationa... impossible to know how many such stories there are
dirtyid 5y ago
>political gain only Political dissidents flee to US (west in general), west (US in particular) will magnify and weaponize dissident for international discourse power when convenient. Countries being targeted spend resource to deter this behaviour. Interesting case of different systems abusing each other's asymmetries - large diasporas in west = lots of asylum for dissidents but also many recruitable foreign assets. And sometimes diaspora drama is innate, deep cultural beef between nationalist and dissident Chinese that IMO will only get more acrimonious with time. Older gen of dissidents who fled PRC when times were bad are dying but their kids and younger generation of dissidents from HK/XJ/TW will clash hard with younger gen of PRC nationalist economic migrants and 1st gen kids of mainlanders who inherited beef against dissidents. It will be shitshow, with lots being exploited by domestic propaganda and foreign espionage.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vmception 5y ago
Same with Ernest Hemingway, remembered for his paranoia later in life, specifically about the US government watching him. Going to doctors for this, to no avail. Turns out the FBI was following him, as detailed in recently classified documents (2010s). My synopsis is that they enabled his predisposition for depression and paranoia. But the initial observation of being watched by the government was not inaccurate.
- astrange 5y ago
  It's much more difficult these days due to Baumol's cost disease. You have to pay the benefits for all those stalkers.
calibas 5y ago
> Who has the time or money to pay 5 people to just go around harassing and stalking people for political gain only? Political gain often means more wealth and power for those involved, and I think we all know the great lengths people will go to for both of those things. Not defending China, but harassing and stalking is fairly tame compared to things like assassinating journalists and starting wars.
CamperBob2 5y ago
Also reminiscent of the batshit-bonkers story of eBay's corporate jihad against a mom-and-pop business: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/ebay-execs-sent-cockroaches-and-bloody-pig-mask-to-harass-journalists-feds/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/ebay-execs-sent-... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/lawsuit-ebay-tried-to-terrorize-stalk-and-silence-couple-that-ran-news-site/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/lawsuit-ebay-tri...
Baeocystin 5y ago
My parents were US diplomats stationed in Moscow in the 50's. The KGB would do things like disable the elevator in their apartment block just as they got home, only to turn it back on the moment they finished walking up to the top floor. Leave music playing in a next door apartment juuust loud enough to be disruptive. Block traffic on a certain street to cause my father to be late to an important meeting with his Soviet counterpart. The list of petty harassment would be pages long if I enumerated everything.
thematrixturtle 5y ago
This was an actual documented Stasi tactic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > the Stasi did attempt to entrap individuals, as for example in the case of Wolf Biermann: > The Stasi set him up with minors, hoping that they could then pursue criminal charges. Am I reading this right? They leveraged child abuse laws against political opponents? Essentially weaponizing children? And this practice is well documented?
batmaniam 5y ago
Even corporations do this kind of thing, not just state agents. There was an interesting case where Ebay harassed two old couple for running a blog that was critical of Ebay practices. Ebay went so far as to cause long-term psychological damage to the couple by mailing them bloody pig masks, signing them up to naughty magazines and sending them to their neighbors, van stalking them, and all other kinds of crazy stuff you wouldn't believe. Everything was directed by senior leadership at Ebay, and 'encouraged' by the CEO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroaches-stalking-scandal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroach... Really interesting read, if you guys wanna learn more. But basically anyone with money and power can initiate this kind of harassment activity.
- foxyv 5y ago
  > Wenig texted Wymer weeks later: "Take her down." > The CEO Wenig's messages were deemed "inappropriate" by eBay, but eBay's internal investigation concluded that the CEO did not know about the stalking and harassment activities.[5] Wenig left eBay in September 2019, with a US$57 million severance package.[5] After the harassment scandal became news, Wenig was re-elected to the board of General Motors.[5] So essentially he got off Scott free due to plausible deniability then threw the people he told to do the deed under the bus. Then got a 50+ million dollar payday and a board position at General motors.
space_rock 5y ago
Sounds conspiratorial/not my experience doesn't mean not true. Humans are great at conspiracies. The word gets used dismissively because paranoid types claim conspiracy without evidence and experience. If you went to your local court you'd hear about many people witnessing conspiracies
octoberfranklin 5y ago
> Sometimes I think this sounds conspiratorial The DOJ is explicitly accusing five specific persons of conspiring: > In one of these schemes, the co-conspirators sought to interfere with federal elections
steve76 5y ago
[dead]
bacan 5y ago
Have you heard of this guy called Snowden? Or maybe Aaron Swartz. Govts have been harassing them too. One guy even took his life
Diesel555 5y ago
> Sometimes I think this sounds conspiratorial, and surely isn't happening. People often read these types of articles and think "this can't be right." Without researching the topic they cannot fathom a government would do such a thing. The CCP's "United Front" organization sponsors many of these actions. However, the fact these things occur is very open source, well published (including in the CCP's 5-year plans), and verified in many academic settings. You just have to read some researched documents or books (if interested, I can recommend plenty), and not rely on your own intuition based on living in a Western society of what the PRC would do. They are taking advantage of democratic principles and using them against us. The media does not heavily report on it due to the clear externality of spurring, or appearing to support, xenophobia against Chinese citizens. However, everything I read intentionally takes the time to point out that their issue is with the CCP and not the Chinese people, as most authors lived in China and love the Chinese culture. We can point out wrongdoing by the CCP without extending those views towards the Chinese people who live under the one party system.
kstenerud 5y ago
Check out Operation Freakout: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout
durnygbur 5y ago
> Who has the time or money to pay 5 people to just go around harassing and stalking people for political gain only? Things are automated now. Nowadays while living in Germany, torrent some movies and stop paying TV license. Then observe what will happen. In society there are hordes of bored lawyers and sadists who eagerly harass for a fee. Given legal immunity and pervert sense of purpose, people simply like to be invasive and predatory.
raxxorrax 5y ago
There is a significant difference though. If foreign governments do it, you have a clear legal recourse. If your own government does it...
alrofinn777 5y ago

daenz 5y ago

Reminds me of Gang stalking[0]. It always seems to happen to people who present themselves as generally not very mentally healthy, but sometimes you have to wonder. If you were the very unlucky target of some deniable, organized harassment effort, it would certainly take its toll on your mental health. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking

brailsafe 5y ago
relevant Onion https://youtu.be/FzoXQKumgCw https://youtu.be/FzoXQKumgCw
- vmception 5y ago
  tangentially relevant Onion https://www.theonion.com/police-flip-through-unsolved-crimes-to-see-what-else-th-1848424844 https://www.theonion.com/police-flip-through-unsolved-crimes...
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    Damn. I was in jail with a lot of very mentally sick people, and this hits too close to home!
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    Tangentially related indeed, though all the really funny writers must have gone to Clickhole when that launched
  - alasdair_ 5y ago
    Irrelevant onion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_onion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_onion
stefan_ 5y ago
The Stasi term for this was Zersetzung: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung
- wswope 5y ago
  You may want to dig into gangstalking as a cultural phenomenon before you legitimize it with that equivalency. This is not cherry-picked; I just went to the subreddit and found a relatively recent post: https://old.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/comments/tf2xd0/they_are_ruining_my_life/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/comments/tf2xd0/they_a.... (Spoilers: the number of people in amphetamine psychosis is several orders of magnitude larger than the number of victims of targeted government harassment.)
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    Yeah, if you look at the post history of the people posting there you will see a lot of posts about meth. Or maybe their mental health is what led them to meth in the first place, because you'd think the meth induced psychosis would wane off over time. But for most of them the delusions keep getting stronger and it can last for year. It's really heartbreaking and the entire paranoid concept of gangstalking makes helping them very very difficult
sneak 5y ago
Worth noting that if you actually ARE being tailed by an organized and well-resourced group, they will frequently use a team of people to do so, time and circumstances permitting.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  This is probably why it's very hard to help someone who is under legitimately delusional feelings of gang stalking, because those who legitimately are and those who are delusional are likely to look the same to outsiders, and will always be considered delusional. If a person is suffering from strong enough paranoia to classify themselves as a "targeted individual", then they've probably walked through the scenario that they might be crazy but also realized that if their paranoia is accurate, then they would also have appeared to be crazy. It's a vicious cycle.
  - TechBro8615 5y ago
    I feel similarly about describing political aspirants as narcissistic or sociopathic based on their "delusions of grandeur" – what about when they actually become president? Not so delusional anymore, I guess? It calls into question the validity of such a diagnosis in the first place, as anything more than a measurement of deviance from some arbitrary and counterfactually ambiguous statistical mean. It's almost as if the entire field of psychiatry harbors delusions of grandeur...
    - alphabettsy 5y ago
      "delusions of grandeur" can mean many things. Someone who thinks they’re a genius and wins a popularity contest is not now provably a genius. Someone who believes themselves to be the fastest athlete is not so when their opponent falls down and they win the race.
kingcharles 5y ago
Don't whatever you do go here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  I tried to go there, but I was directed to install the app and there was no option to continue browsing on the web. Reddit dark patterns have come to a point where they are literally disabling the web frontend for mobile users?
  - leoqa 5y ago
    Add the old subdomain to avoid the mobile stuff. The link is a subreddit of people complaining about being stalked and then trailing off into other conspiracies. Edit: old.reddit.com/r/gangstalking

davidb_ 5y ago

Any chance you have a source for the bicycle tire story? I'm keen to read more about it (and similar stories).

IncRnd 5y ago
The East German Police after WWII had a policy of Zersetzung, their type of petty, persistant psychological harassment that disrupted people's lives. I'm curious, did they stop teaching in school that Zersetzung happened in East Germany in the context of WWII? I was taught in High School about that.
- davidb_ 5y ago
  I was educated in the US and took AP US History in high school. I don't recall a specific reference to Zersetzung within that curriculum, but the idea that life in East Germany was difficult due to Stasi oppression was covered. I don't recall specific examples like the story I asked about though (besides my own extracurricular references from movies/books).
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    Thanks for the complete answer! It doesn't actually answer what I wanted to know, but it does answer exactly what I asked.
alisonatwork 5y ago
There are several stories like this at the Stasi Museum[0]. Highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in Berlin. The Jugend Widerstands (Youth Resistance) Museum[1] has some interesting stories about life in the DDR too. [0] https://stasimuseum.de/ https://stasimuseum.de/ [1] https://widerstandsmuseum.de/ https://widerstandsmuseum.de/
philovivero 5y ago
Did a quick search and didn't find it. All I remember is it was written up in a rather major publication some years ago talking about the fall of Stasi. While trying to find my source, I did find out Putin was in East Germany when the wall fell, and was working for KGB. Along with Stasi, Putin burned so much evidence of their wrongdoing, it broke the furnace. So I guess Putin was a questionable fellow even back in the 1980's and 1990's!

dralley 5y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1HWNcLDK88&t=5614s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1HWNcLDK88&t=5614s

Sakos 5y ago

There are a lot of cases of Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Saudi, etc. dissidents or critics being targeted overseas. I'm not sure why it's a surprise to anyone or why people think it doesn't happen.

synergy20 5y ago
To make sure the qualify of the brain-wash process for the whole country, which is the foundation for those countries' stability, dissidents must be eliminated or harassed enough so they shut-up, wherever they might be.
tsol 5y ago
Agreed. It seems naive to think "of course that wouldn't actually happen" without any real evidence except your own incredulity. Why shouldn't they harass people in small ways? It's cheap, annoying, and minor enough that most people will just brush it all off as coincidences. You obtain your goal of punishing those who got on your wrong side, without having to worry about attracting too much attention. Hell it doesn't even have to be state actors, if anyone here pisses off someone with too much money, it wouldn't be hard to hire someone anonymously on craigslist to harass you. People have done a lot worse for a lot less money
anonporridge 5y ago
puts on tinfoil hat Because the belief that this kind of gang stalking never happens and people who think that they are getting harassed like this are always crazy is a psyop designed to make sure the public is more susceptible to the rare, but highly effective practice.

noobermin 5y ago

That reminds me of COINTELPRO, and how the FBI tried to get MLK to commit suicide by sending him a harassing black mailing letter. It's amazing how states particularly when they have apparatuses that can go rouge or are even actually encouraged by the government like the Stasi were go to ridiculous lengths to harass people they find politically inconvenient.

mistrial9 5y ago
that is true, but that was more than fifty years ago..
- exhilaration 5y ago
  This was posted yesterday in one of the comments on HN if you want a better idea of what the FBI does these days: https://casetext.com/analysis/how-to-spot-the-informant-at-your-local-mosque https://casetext.com/analysis/how-to-spot-the-informant-at-y...
- skrtskrt 5y ago
  I'm sure they've cleaned up their act by now! Surely they aren't during stuff like that, and "thwarting" "terrorist plots" where the "conspirators" are FBI assets themselves
  - bpiche 5y ago
    what are you referring to? the Boston bombing?
    - evan_ 5y ago
      https://theintercept.com/2017/09/03/the-fbi-pressured-a-lonely-young-man-into-a-bomb-plot-he-tried-to-back-out-now-hes-serving-life-in-prison/ https://theintercept.com/2017/09/03/the-fbi-pressured-a-lone... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/magazine/fbi-international-terrorism-informants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/magazine/fbi-internationa... impossible to know how many such stories there are

dirtyid 5y ago

>political gain only Political dissidents flee to US (west in general), west (US in particular) will magnify and weaponize dissident for international discourse power when convenient. Countries being targeted spend resource to deter this behaviour. Interesting case of different systems abusing each other's asymmetries - large diasporas in west = lots of asylum for dissidents but also many recruitable foreign assets. And sometimes diaspora drama is innate, deep cultural beef between nationalist and dissident Chinese that IMO will only get more acrimonious with time. Older gen of dissidents who fled PRC when times were bad are dying but their kids and younger generation of dissidents from HK/XJ/TW will clash hard with younger gen of PRC nationalist economic migrants and 1st gen kids of mainlanders who inherited beef against dissidents. It will be shitshow, with lots being exploited by domestic propaganda and foreign espionage.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

vmception 5y ago

Same with Ernest Hemingway, remembered for his paranoia later in life, specifically about the US government watching him. Going to doctors for this, to no avail. Turns out the FBI was following him, as detailed in recently classified documents (2010s). My synopsis is that they enabled his predisposition for depression and paranoia. But the initial observation of being watched by the government was not inaccurate.

astrange 5y ago
It's much more difficult these days due to Baumol's cost disease. You have to pay the benefits for all those stalkers.

calibas 5y ago

> Who has the time or money to pay 5 people to just go around harassing and stalking people for political gain only? Political gain often means more wealth and power for those involved, and I think we all know the great lengths people will go to for both of those things. Not defending China, but harassing and stalking is fairly tame compared to things like assassinating journalists and starting wars.

CamperBob2 5y ago

Also reminiscent of the batshit-bonkers story of eBay's corporate jihad against a mom-and-pop business: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/ebay-execs-sent-cockroaches-and-bloody-pig-mask-to-harass-journalists-feds/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/ebay-execs-sent-... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/lawsuit-ebay-tried-to-terrorize-stalk-and-silence-couple-that-ran-news-site/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/lawsuit-ebay-tri...

Baeocystin 5y ago

My parents were US diplomats stationed in Moscow in the 50's. The KGB would do things like disable the elevator in their apartment block just as they got home, only to turn it back on the moment they finished walking up to the top floor. Leave music playing in a next door apartment juuust loud enough to be disruptive. Block traffic on a certain street to cause my father to be late to an important meeting with his Soviet counterpart. The list of petty harassment would be pages long if I enumerated everything.

thematrixturtle 5y ago

This was an actual documented Stasi tactic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung

matheusmoreira 5y ago
> the Stasi did attempt to entrap individuals, as for example in the case of Wolf Biermann: > The Stasi set him up with minors, hoping that they could then pursue criminal charges. Am I reading this right? They leveraged child abuse laws against political opponents? Essentially weaponizing children? And this practice is well documented?

batmaniam 5y ago

Even corporations do this kind of thing, not just state agents. There was an interesting case where Ebay harassed two old couple for running a blog that was critical of Ebay practices. Ebay went so far as to cause long-term psychological damage to the couple by mailing them bloody pig masks, signing them up to naughty magazines and sending them to their neighbors, van stalking them, and all other kinds of crazy stuff you wouldn't believe. Everything was directed by senior leadership at Ebay, and 'encouraged' by the CEO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroaches-stalking-scandal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroach... Really interesting read, if you guys wanna learn more. But basically anyone with money and power can initiate this kind of harassment activity.

foxyv 5y ago
> Wenig texted Wymer weeks later: "Take her down." > The CEO Wenig's messages were deemed "inappropriate" by eBay, but eBay's internal investigation concluded that the CEO did not know about the stalking and harassment activities.[5] Wenig left eBay in September 2019, with a US$57 million severance package.[5] After the harassment scandal became news, Wenig was re-elected to the board of General Motors.[5] So essentially he got off Scott free due to plausible deniability then threw the people he told to do the deed under the bus. Then got a 50+ million dollar payday and a board position at General motors.

space_rock 5y ago

Sounds conspiratorial/not my experience doesn't mean not true. Humans are great at conspiracies. The word gets used dismissively because paranoid types claim conspiracy without evidence and experience. If you went to your local court you'd hear about many people witnessing conspiracies

octoberfranklin 5y ago

> Sometimes I think this sounds conspiratorial The DOJ is explicitly accusing five specific persons of conspiring: > In one of these schemes, the co-conspirators sought to interfere with federal elections

steve76 5y ago

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bacan 5y ago

Have you heard of this guy called Snowden? Or maybe Aaron Swartz. Govts have been harassing them too. One guy even took his life

Diesel555 5y ago

> Sometimes I think this sounds conspiratorial, and surely isn't happening. People often read these types of articles and think "this can't be right." Without researching the topic they cannot fathom a government would do such a thing. The CCP's "United Front" organization sponsors many of these actions. However, the fact these things occur is very open source, well published (including in the CCP's 5-year plans), and verified in many academic settings. You just have to read some researched documents or books (if interested, I can recommend plenty), and not rely on your own intuition based on living in a Western society of what the PRC would do. They are taking advantage of democratic principles and using them against us. The media does not heavily report on it due to the clear externality of spurring, or appearing to support, xenophobia against Chinese citizens. However, everything I read intentionally takes the time to point out that their issue is with the CCP and not the Chinese people, as most authors lived in China and love the Chinese culture. We can point out wrongdoing by the CCP without extending those views towards the Chinese people who live under the one party system.

kstenerud 5y ago

Check out Operation Freakout: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout

durnygbur 5y ago

> Who has the time or money to pay 5 people to just go around harassing and stalking people for political gain only? Things are automated now. Nowadays while living in Germany, torrent some movies and stop paying TV license. Then observe what will happen. In society there are hordes of bored lawyers and sadists who eagerly harass for a fee. Given legal immunity and pervert sense of purpose, people simply like to be invasive and predatory.

raxxorrax 5y ago

There is a significant difference though. If foreign governments do it, you have a clear legal recourse. If your own government does it...

alrofinn777 5y ago