harass

At the ground level, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of private citizens act as self-appointed KGB agents, poking their nose into other people’s business and publicly denouncing them to get them fired or otherwise harassed.

There are the highs of fame and the lows of being harassed by internet strangers.

“Nobody ever signed up to be harassed, to be targeted. That should never happen,” he said.

After a chance encounter in 2023, Briana Ortega claims in a civil lawsuit that a Riverside County sheriff’s deputy used law enforcement databases to track her down and harass her.

“Mr. Sweet’s course of conduct, including threats to harm my family, are seriously alarming and harassing and are extremely distressing to me and my family,” she wrote in a declaration, filed on Mar. 3, 2014.