The Government Is Watching Me… Or Is It? Inside the Mind of Surveillance Paranoia

They’re not spies. They’re not whistleblowers. They’re not handling classified intel. So why are some ordinary people absolutely convinced the government is tracking them with drones, listening through walls with directional microphones, or monitoring every move they make? 

In this episode of Hidden Threads, Macky and Jus discuss real-world cases involving clients who believed shadowy agencies were targeting them—despite living otherwise ordinary lives as mechanics, HR professionals, and tradespeople. How do investigators handle these calls professionally? When do claims point to legitimate privacy concerns—and when is something else going on? 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So your friend told you to change shirts, right? Yes, he did. Okay. And and I put on the red shirt and the red hat. The MAGA. Yeah. You know, we get we get yelled at on for being MAGA sometimes. I don't care. I don't either. What what's the alternative? I'm not gonna be a Lib Tard. There's no alternative. They haven't I've said this to Democrats before. You have not presented a viable alternative for me. So that's not that's how it goes. See, now that'll just twist them up. Yeah, they get mad and start, and then they call you racist and fascist. They don't have an argument for you. But your friend said that you wore the gray or black all the time. Yes. And I do. That's fine for video. I do, but I I don't wear it just for the video. People hanging out of the frames. You know my beautiful face in the frame, right? Yeah, we do. I wear it because you know I had a dog and I have a cat, and the f fur shows up on anything black. Right. Well, I always used to wear black shirts, but with the fur, I do the gray shirts. Well, the black shirts hold up with the retired Irish mafia guy. So you're not Irish. No, I'm English. Did the English have mafia? Yeah. What is it called? Didn't you ever see uh Peaky Blinders? I I couldn't, they didn't speak English on there. I didn't understand what they were saying. So yeah. They spoke English. It's just a weird one. Yeah. Yeah, but I'm talking about modern day, other than just your regular street dogs, you know what I mean? So sure. All right. The mafia's not gone anywhere. The Yakuza is not gone. What's the Yakuz? Yakuza? Japanese mafia. Oh yeah. Yeah, they're a big deal. Still. They they're big into the human trafficking thing. Yeah, Russian mafia. They're that's all. They'll get into whatever makes them money the easiest, they get into it, right? So we got a fun one today, Juice. Right. We got we've talked about a little bit before. The title is The Client Who Thinks They're Being Watched. Like legitimate ones or the aluminum foil, the aliens are coming ones. We'll start with the aliens are coming ones first. Oh, awesome. Aluminum foil time. Yeah. I get into that a lot where they're like, you got a guy that's a plumber, right? Right. Run the plumbing truck. And he swears that the government has invaded his woods behind his house. And he said he walked out there one night and saw like tents, military tents with Humvees sitting around, and there was guys on radios inside the tent. Okay. I went there and the woods have not been disturbed. I told him that he told me I was lying. Right, because that's what you're gonna do. And he also said that drones are following him everywhere he goes. And I rode around with him. I said, show me these drones, and there were stars in the sky. A drone following you, he was talking like military predator drones. They're gonna deploy that predator, follow you, the plumber. At a sandrock, you know what I mean? So I'm changing the names of the towns up. Right. So maybe he has some like secret skills with plumbing that they need to know about. Right. Now he has been arrested for meth before. Oh. Huh. That's odd. He's supposed to be clean. Meth does call drug-induced euphoria, psychosis, seeing the feeling thing. Meth is a big en especially deeper into your abuse, like the more you use it over time, it gets worse. Oh yeah, you get ate up by meth mites and everything. Right. You dig you dig the holes in your skin. I've explained to this guy. I said, I don't think that their government, foreign or domestic, any of them, are going to deploy military resources to watch a plumber. He's not former Russian or nothing. How did he take that? He didn't. He weren't, he told me to I was lying and all this stuff. So anyway. Imagine that. Now we do have them at a smaller scale that say, I know my phone's hacked. I get on there and I'm like, no, the software, which is good. Right. Says there's no malware, spyware on your phone, which is required on an Android or an iPhone. I don't care what Reddit says, I do not care. There is malware or spyware required on that device for them to listen from that device. Right. All right. Now, at the cloud level, if they have your login information, yes, they can do things and see what you've been saying and read your emails and text messages. So I shouldn't have to worry about NSA listening in on my phone calls. No, there's they try to say it's government level hacking. It got past my software, all the stuff. Right. Now they can hide apps on there. My software says, hey, here's the hidden apps. We found them on there before where Mr. Husband or future ex-husband put MSPY on a phone and hit it and as a calculator. That's but I find I can find out today, that right now. But you are a single woman that's a nurse, and nobody's touched your phone except for you in three years. And you haven't lost it or you hadn't come up missing. So I wonder if she's getting into the patient meds. I don't know. But her boyfriend had access to her Amazon account, her iCloud account, her Gmail account, all those things. But it's she said, no, that's not it. He wouldn't do that to me. Really? Really? Okay. All right then. I guess my certifications and experience do not count here. You nurse Nancy. Wow. That read Reddit one day or ChatGPT. You're you got it.

unknown 5:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

I've testified in court about this stuff, you know. So it doesn't matter though, right? No. No. None of that. No. What are your thoughts on these people that insist that they are being Some of them I think are legit. And there is one we were worked on, and I thought, I don't know, dude. And you're like, oh no, there was something there. Which one? That first one where we went for that really long drive north. Oh yeah. That was legit. Yeah. Now there's claims of extra. Like, I've got things in my listing devices in my brain and all this stuff. Now, they had hacked her device, one of them, and because she was subject to get a large inheritance, and her sisters and these other people making her look nuts, and they're it's working. Yeah. Uh but they would they would actually seen her data with a software they'd put on that phone. And um Yeah, sometimes I think it's legit. I I didn't think so on that one though. Right. It was. I mean there was there was it it was there was something there. Not a hundred percent legit, maybe like twenty. Yeah, but there was something there. Big time claims there, but we found where somebody had put something on her device and was listening and watching and all those things. Yeah. I I just know that when I get called to to places when I was policing, people were wearing the aluminum foil helmets and you know what they were claiming was not true. And around here it's a lot of methamphetamine. Yes. Now they got super meth. Have you heard of this? No. It's some kind of it's made quicker with a different ingredient. I haven't looked at the ingredients yet, I haven't studied it, but it's called supermeth. I'm like, how much more meth can we get? You know, I mean, it's supposed to be I wonder if it's a a higher or a more concentrated Probably. I haven't looked at the ingredients yet, so I'll look them up one day and we'll talk about it. But I thought meth was like the upper end of the amphetamine level. You know, I mean, so yeah, crystal meth amphetamine is, but I guess there's a way to make it more pure, more potent. There's always a way to make it. Some some chemist somewhere is gonna figure it out. And to make it cheaper and with the ingredients they get out they can get off the street without Jesse and Walter White are gonna figure it out on Breaking Bad. What a great show. Yeah, by the way. I love that show. It's a good one. The uh what was his 98% clean or something? Yeah. I've never seen a meth head though, a crackhead, a meth head have such perfect teeth like Jesse did in that show. Yeah, Jesse would come and go. He'll be addicted for a little while. Yeah, but for as much as he was strung out on it, his teeth were just so pure white. They were very good. I saw one at Dollar General the other day. I was like, man, them teeth are rough. So yeah. I I worked with a couple that they better hope they don't conduct your analysis at work. Right. Over at your place. Yeah. Well, you gotta work second shift, baby. It's a long shift. Well, third shift. Okay. Yeah. So that makes it even worse, but there's there's a few got that summer teeth going. Right. We've had one recently where it was a a woman was the sole dissenter in the homeowners association about something. You know, the homeowners association were 200 plus people, and people started harassing her. Now we got some video where people are going on for her property and all this stuff, but it's not at the level that she thought, where she's thinking, where they're she's convinced they've got microwave, like the Havana syndrome, those kind of listening devices where directs the microwaves and you can hear vibration off the windows and all that. So she thinks it's that. I said we looked at the cost of one of those devices, it was in the millions, but anyway. Well, yeah, you would definitely have the money for one of those around here. Right. It's in Huntsville, so they got a little more money there, but not much. Yeah. They got more bills over there, right? Right. She thought her phones had been hacked and we showed they had not been. She's one of the ones that said, Well, your software is not good enough. They bypassed that. I said, So this boy walking around your backyard is not good enough. The police trespassed the guy. But that wasn't good enough. She said it's still going on. You know what I mean? So Yeah. Some of them I think are legit. Most of them, though, the the more the story goes, the more I'm like. Right. Somebody's cuckoo for cocoa butts. Yeah. But um, I don't know. Paranoia is a big thing, and I think some of it's drug induced, some of it's legit. Like we need to make it. Most of it, I think, in my opinion, would probably be a partner of some sort doing it. Make them look dumb? Make them look crazy? Well, planting the stuff on their phone, like you said, the the MSP and all that on their phones and their devices and that's generally where it would I I would think a majority of the cases would be. Yeah. We'd get some of those where there's legitimate eavesdropping going on, but most of the time it's not. Yeah. And uh I mean, we explain that to you when we come in to the beginning, we're like, hey, here's the the percentage of us finding eavesdropping software and devices is about 5%. And they continue on, like, always try it. You know what I mean? I'm like, okay. Now now trackers? Oh, yeah, we fight I think so.

unknown 11:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Trackers, they throw an air tag in there and they follow them around. So Alabama just had the first felony conviction from the new tracker law here recently. Uh-oh. But it was a guy that beat the crap out of his wife and got a protection from abuse order and put a tracker on her car, continued to track her. So that's what that's there for, the law. Yeah. I just don't want to I just don't want to accidentally slip and fall into it. I'm not abusing anybody, but it's still cover, you know, if we do it, it's it's a problem. You know, and so but that's there for that reason where, you know, dude's beating up his his stalkers and all that crap. That's what it's there for. So we just had a call yesterday where a guy has a protection from abuse order going through a divorce, wants us to put a tracker on his wife's car that he owns and follow her around. I'm like, nah, we're not gonna do that. I said we can do digital stuff, like see what she's into, you know, digitally, but we can't put eyes on her and tell you where she is. You know, and can't do it. Because it I'm not getting in the I don't want to have to explain myself. Is that the word? That's liability. Yeah. Um, no. Protection from abuse hurts the surveillance activities. Yeah. Because they're gonna be we had it before where they didn't tell us that a protection from abuse. And I had to go sit there and say, Did you dot transmit her location to your client at at the time it was happening? I was like, no. Okay, and it showed we didn't. You know, it was like two or three days later. Uh well, we none of the cases we we do that on. We don't tell them where they are. It causes problems, man. That's this they they get that part of the report after the fact. That's a after hours, you know, after action report that that they see. Right. But we don't tell them right where they're at. That would jeopardize so much stuff for the case right there. I've read nightmare scenarios where the where the actual client was out with the PI. Yeah, that's a no-no. And they ran up and started a fight. Like, yeah. They got that show, what is it, cheaters? Cheater buster, whatever it is. Yeah. They take them with them and then they go confront them. That's liability. Well, we we're not doing that. And I don't want to be live on the phone, text you, yeah, he's here with her now, and they show up and march their tail into the hotel and start knocking on doors. Yeah, I don't want that to happen. Yeah. Imagine if you do that and they show up knocking on doors and find that one door and they've got a gun with them. Start blasting through doors. Yeah. I'm gonna be like, I want to reverse out of here, try to sneak out. Crazy. Uh yeah, we try not to tell them live. It's a highly all these cases where we're talking about the people with the psychosis going on, possibly, there's some kind of highly emotionally charged thing that stressed their life. Divorce, custody, inheritance, those kind of things can be emotionally they drive. And I think it people may have that psychosis bent, it pushes them over the edge and it starts presenting itself. For a lot of people, divorce is like the end of the world. Aaron Powell It's the worst thing can happen to you by except for a close family member dying. You know what I mean? I don't know about that, but Oh, it depends on if you like them or not. Yeah. It all depends. I've been divorced twice, so what makes it worse is when you got little children involved. That's where the emotions start coming in. They they do. The leading cause of divorce is marriage. That's correct. Yeah. I found that out. Did Aristotle say that? A great man once said that. So crates. Yes. Socrates. Socrates. Bill and Ted. Yeah, Bill and Ted. That's a great movie, by the way. So yeah, I mean, it was highly emotionally charged, and if you're bent to having psychosis, it might push you over the edge. Yeah. Some people need medicine. And some of it, it some of the divorces we've worked, it get pretty stressful. A lot of money, kids involved, properties, all that stuff. Yeah. Everybody's claiming it's theirs. Yeah. And it's just making the other person mad. And if if you are already predisposed to have some type of mental health breakdown, that will do it. That will push you over the edge. And alcohol doesn't help by now. I don't recommend self-medicating with booze. Yeah, you don't want to do that. Right. All right. Well, that's all we got here. Done for the day, juice. You get to go to sleep. I'm not going to sleep. We've discussed this. I'm going to go eat something. I'm going to walk with my daughter and work on the bike. Probably eat something. Well, I'm I'm fat. I gotta eat. Get a burger or something. Speaking of which, the little Mexican restaurant in Fife is good. Yeah. They have a little buffet during the day. But but the other one up in Rainesville is still pretty good too. The one with the bull in the front? Yeah. Yeah, it's all right. I like the buffet at they have a buffet there at the Rainsville one. I don't think so. I like the buffet at Fife. You can get hot wings and a taco. All that stuff. Get everything. And a head and you can get French fries and a taco. But all right, we're gonna get off here and we'll be back with some more topics soon. See ya, Juice. See ya.