Eternal Vigilance
6 years ago I learned of rogue Private Investigators (PIs) apparently spying on a friend who sued the NHS after they had destroyed his life by experimenting on him with totally inappropriate medication (the person who did this experiment even boasted it was an experiment, then he suddenly 'retired'). They apparently tried to collect information or 'dirt' about him by approaching people whom he knew (the person who did that had come from the Army and then mysteriously disappeared after getting banned by the hotel, making an obviously fake story on his way out). He was identified by hotel staff as nothing but trouble because of this behaviour. He only 'joined' to spy on somebody. The CCTV footage showed that.
About 2 decades ago Pamela Jones (PJ) of Groklaw had been spied on in her home (or just outside her home) by a SCO-connected hack spying on her home and car, then writing an attack piece on her (MOG). PJ was also sent serious death threats. She shared them with US authorities and many years later with the public, too (readers of Groklaw). The story goes, if that's accurate at all, that the MOG story resulted in a DDOS attack on the site. It sounds plausible, but some people later alleged that it's merely an unverified urban myth or a smear against PJ and/or Groklaw. Eventually PJ quit writing and became invisible because she no longer felt safe. https://groklaw.net/ has been offline for nearly half a year already.
I too received more death threats than I can recall over the years. I didn't keep count. The more potent threats were reported to the police (cops then mark addresses as worthy of observation in case of an unseen escalation/emergency).
This isn't "paranoia zone"; those things do happen. They happen all the time. More than a year ago cops explained to me that many such things happened all the time, but only a small proportion of threats would result in action (murder attempts).
At the moment things are still tense; we deal with violent Microsoft con jobs (American citizens) and their "hired guns from London" sending unauthorised and totally inappropriate messages to our lawyer, basically trying to not only threaten but also spy (the "hired guns" or "guns for hire" were clearly told to stop doing that; their licence does not permit this). Earlier today we saw some suspicious cars next to our home with unknown numberplates (they don't live here) and people sitting inside them. Now, we're not saying someone is sending friends and/or PIs to our home. But we're keeping this stuff under observation.
When dealing with some madman from Texas who has a history of physically assaulting women (strangulation) and telling them to kill themselves we must react proportionally. This isn't libel. He got arrested and charged for it. He begged me to hide this.
Perhaps the incredible thing is that Microsoft hires such people (paying them huge salaries; remember the Microsoft Stabber Joseph Cantrell [1, 2, 3] as he too was on hard drugs) and a debt-saddled firm still deems them worthy clients. One of them boasts in his blog that he wants to stab some people; he seems to have a morbid obsession with blades (he's very thin and weak, but weapons can compensate for it). Nothing creepy about that, right? He keeps justifying physical violence against people in FOSS whom he disagrees with.
We'll stay vigilant and strive for appropriate transparency. █