It's maddening when you get caught up in such targeted surveillance efforts.

<story time>

At one point I programmed from the same cafe almost daily for much of a year. A mid-level drug dealer decided to setup shop in the cafe, often sitting near me. His street dealers would come in about once a week for a pow-wow where they'd all exchange cheap burner phones for new ones he'd supply, backpack was overflowing with phones. I always wore headphones so never really overheard their discussions, and never wanted to invite conversation, so I just ignored this hoping it'd just go away as these things tend to constantly move around. I'd always see some illicit activity in every cafe I worked from often enough, so it wasn't too surprising.

Then one day things got crazy with him running out to the nearby clifftop carrying massive binoculars looking over the Pacific ocean, running back in talking on his phone about locations and times of a shipment and trucks dumping "meth shit", it was like a breaking bad episode irl. Everyone in the cafe saw this happening, he was well on the road to getting busted for being so obvious in public. Something had gone wrong with a pickup and he was having a sort of crisis right there in the open, making all these calls and yelling at people about the situation.

I ended up mentioning it to the owners who seemed ignorant of this happening in their cafe, as they employed lackeys to run the place and were rarely around. They were furious and clearly intended to do something about it, especially when they realized he was a local guy they knew who went to school with their son.

So I avoided the cafe for some time after that. Maybe a month or so goes by and I start testing the waters, guy seems completely gone, all better right?

Not quite. Unfamiliar people started showing up at the cafe hovering around me, following me, asking about my phone, phone starts malfunctioning, asking about my laptop, totally obvious and annoying shit. They'd come in and sometimes just sit right across from me without ordering anything more than a single paper cup of black coffee just to have ordered something, and keep checking their watch. Right at the stroke of 5, up and walk out, they were working shifts and eager to leave. When I'd switch to another nearby cafe, they'd miss me for a few days then start appearing there too. When you spend enough time in a small local cafe over years you recognize the locals, you know the customer patterns, this kind of thing sticks out like a sore thumb.

All this just because I was in proximity to this bullshit happening in a cafe I frequented. Though, the fact that I was at the cafe nearly every day and probably appeared to not have a legitimate income source I'm sure didn't help. But I wasn't doing anything illegal, just taking a break from the SV grind.

What I learned was that there's substantial resources thrown at this style of policing. It's like a dust-devil blowing around to wherever some shit goes down, and whoever's nearby becomes a person of interest. Eventually it will blow on to another priority, but until it does you're annoyed by its invasion into your personal life.

I don't remember how long this went on for (if I ever really knew). I ended up stopping going to these cafes for months, just programming from my apt instead, and disposing of that phone not long after it started malfunctioning, simply going phoneless for a very long time. Fortunately my thinkpad never seemed to be affected, though I'm sure I retired it earlier than I would have otherwise.