PERSPECTIVES

By Sally Ann Vazquez-Castellanos, Esq.

Perspectives: Technology, Global Privacy, and Data Protection

Published on July 14, 2025. Revised on July 15, 2025 at 6:15 pm.

What if the walls could hear or speak? Got an RF detector? How’s that vanity? How’s that closet working for you? Noise or environmental interference on your cellphone? I’ve read cases about guards at black sites and detention centers who humiliate and tear human beings apart under national security orders. What about celebrities and politicians? We need only look to our national media at times to understand that the problem is systemic. The weaponization of technology. If you think it isn’t possible. Think again.

After daring to watch Inception on my streaming service, a favorite movie of mine, I considered women, men, corporate stakeholders, and “others” who in some instances use the notion of the vanity (or mirror) as a weapon to keep their social and professional circles small. Women and men engaged in the shameful and disturbing practice of tearing others apart. Snow White? Instead of see inside your soul, see inside your bitter soulless disturbed black heart. A disturbing reflection on the rest of society. Hardly, the Disney we all grew up with, but for those with a political axe to grind, you certainly seized the moment—didn’t you …

How about stealing the lives of people you are sworn to represent; whether for fame, fortune, or to satisfy prurient interests.

Enjoy abusing women by assuming control over their bodies via technology? Got an issue with a woman in your community? Different political party or point of view? Conflict or competition at work? In your family? Does technology abuse provide the answer? Behavior modification or CAT? Please learn more about the Convention on Torture, and maybe read the Geneva Conventions for good measure.

Because it shouldn’t.

There are all sorts of laws that need to be considered, not to mention civil rights laws, but you should also be aware that civil harassment actions and unfair competition laws are also a thing. There are also laws against maligning and blackmailing families.

Around the world, intentional murders and targeted killings are another thing. Targeting, torturing and murdering attorneys, journalists, women and children is no state of fair play. There are laws against that too. Shielding yourselves under a “veil” of national security and secrecy is an abomination.

I said it before and I will say it again. It’s a brave new world and once you headed down this dystopian path you destroyed something extremely important to this country and to the rest of the world.

Dignity and human rights should never be bartered. It harkens back to the national debate over the efficacy of torture and detainees at Guantanamo Bay. How about the implications of child soldiers, or worse?

As an Attorney of Puerto Rican descent (Born in the Bronx and raised in New York State), I am profoundly disappointed at the direction this country is headed.

For survivors of stalking, harassment, or high-tech abuse, this isn’t science fiction—it’s a daily reality.

Then there’s cryptocurrency and the realm of blockchain. Anyone “own” Kraken? How about Quasimodo? If there isn’t such a “thing” in the crypto world, I wouldn’t be surprised if it suddenly popped up in our current culture of double meanings and double standards. For those of you who are offended, please read my statement on beauty.

It’s enough to give anyone a headache.

And, what does it all mean? It’s sort of like that ol’ “two faced” reference. What may seem innocuous on the one hand, may suddenly and brazenly become weaponized on the other hand.

As an attorney, I’m left to ask—is trust, safety, and content moderation going to be enough in a world of (AI) artificial intelligence? What about in a world of topsy turvy?

In an age where surveillance devices are disguised as smart plugs, doorbells, or electrical outlets, the line between a “connected home” and coercive control is dangerously thin.

Worse, for those already facing trauma, litigation, or intimidation, the tools of convenience may become weapons of psychological warfare.

From Hollywood wiretap scandals to immigration detention centers and domestic violence cases, covert surveillance, and unauthorized mental intrusion are now matters of constitutional law and human rights.

The thing about aural voice transfers. People who enjoy yelling expletives inside of people’s cerebral cortex? Maybe we all should dig deeper into human rights abuse cases.

After the decision in Shelby County, what if racism and gerrymandering is given a new face?

An entirely new playbook thumbing its nose at the Telecommunications Act, the Video Privacy Protection Act, and the Cable Communications Act. After watching movies like The Help and Steel Magnolias on Netflix —while submitting your U.S. Census online — going well beyond counting the number of jellybeans in a fish bowl.

Opposition Research, Blackmail, Anthony Pellicano and the Blueprint for Surveillance Abuse

In the 2000s, private investigator Anthony Pellicano was convicted on 78 federal charges related to illegal wiretapping, eavesdropping, and privacy invasion. His methods—once dismissed as Hollywood gossip—included:

Hidden microphones in walls, vents, and fixtures Illegally accessed voicemails and phone conversations. Surveillance sold to lawyers and studios to gain leverage in litigation.

Pellicano’s case made clear that powerful actors can use covert technology to intimidate, retaliate, and control—and that traditional privacy laws were not built for what came next.

Hidden Surveillance in the Home: A Modern Threat

Today, the tactics have evolved. Victims report? Do they really? 🤷🏻‍♀️ How’s your state guardianship and conservatorship laws holding up?

Anyone watch Inception lately? Strange noises or echoing in specific rooms? Nope?

Maybe you’re not really crazy after all. Devices that appear or malfunction without reason? Content appearing on devices (like streaming services) that seem to mimic private conversations or emotional trauma? Or, perhaps it’s “profiling” at play, and not necessarily the kind of profiling you want to invite inside of your home.

These incidents aren’t always delusional. The whole its in your head thing, may be far more than a poor choice of words. When we speak about trauma informed judicial officers, there’s a lot more to learn about technology abuse and dirty tactics as well. These incidents may reflect the presence of covert surveillance, especially in homes that were part of a custody battle, litigation, media targeting, or a high-stakes investigation.

Of course, you can only report so much.

In the end, discrimination and corruption is invariably what it is; And, the promise of the Internet, autonomous vehicles and technology should be met with extreme caution.

How to Detect Covert Listening Devices

If you suspect that surveillance devices have been installed in your home, start with these steps:

Physical and Visual Inspection

Look for:

iPhone, earbud and AirTag vulnerabilities. Unfamiliar power adapters, wall outlets, smoke detectors, or vents. Devices plugged in that you did not install? Small drilled holes or reflective surfaces near key living spaces?

Use a Radio Frequency (RF) Detector. Anyone have a reliable brand they might suggest?

Would any of these apps help if your device is taken over? Could you make that phone call? Could you protect your vehicle? Your radio? Could you protect your children?

It’s a lot for attorneys to consider. When you watch the news and learn about Hispanics and Latinos being picked up off the streets, maybe you really should care.

Think about the ramifications for universities, law students and their professors, solo practitioners and each and every attorney across every sector of American society.

You do an injustice to your fellow members of the bar when you claim that they are not in the so called “big” leagues and therefore have no right of commentary or opinion.

Back to those handy tools and apps. Do they provide a back door to your device?

It’s said that these handheld tools are designed to scan for wireless signals emitted by hidden bugs or transmitters, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or GSM-based devices. 🤔

❓ Anyone have an RF detector? If you’ve used one or know a reliable brand, share your insights—it could help someone else reclaim their privacy.

Network and Wi-Fi Analysis

What about corporate responsibility? What happens when those subpoenas and warrants come in to your legal staff in this current environment?

What about the reliability of each and every application that you download on your device? Did you unwittingly open up a door?

Do any of these apps really work for a woman who is being abused via technology?

It’s suggested that you use apps like Fing or Wireshark to scan for unknown devices connected to your home network. Are these real applications? Do they work when your device is under someone else’s control? What are the inherent risks of these applications? Are you creating a greater security risk by downloading the application on your phone?

🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m told to look for the following:

Devices with unfamiliar MAC addresses. Got devices that are broadcasting silently but communicating externally? Whose voice do you hear?

Is it a Khardashian voice you hear in your home?

Your car?

Your closet?

How about your neighborhood grocery store?

Practical or Impractical Joker’s (Maybe it’s Jokers) 🫣

This is not Sesame Street. 🤔 Practice pronunciation of your name lately? Maybe learn phonetics for each and every name you come across, or at least in this article. And, learn to think carefully or critically about what’s happening around you.

Do you hear it inside the cabin of your Lexus? How about your brand new Audi? Did you choose the Mercedes Benz? Or, the red lipstick?

Advanced Detection

Infrared cameras or nonlinear junction detectors (NLJDs) can reveal hidden devices even when they’re powered off.

Professionals can conduct these sweeps and produce documentation for legal use. But is it really practical for a woman who is in trouble? What about her children? Or, her dying mother.

Attorneys need to realize that there are individuals who are extremely skilled at using these techniques and technologies. It places everyone at risk.

When Media Becomes a Message🫣

Technology-facilitated abuse isn’t limited to hardware. Increasingly, it involves algorithmic triggers and emotionally charged content placement—especially for whistleblowers, targets of media campaigns, or litigants.

Example: After reading a news article about an immigration detainee named Ana who was held in solitary confinement and denied legal counsel, your Netflix homepage surfaces Inventing Anna—a series about female deception, incarceration, and manipulation.

Coincidence? Maybe. But when media personalization mirrors private pain, it becomes a form of psychological targeting—possibly informed by surveillance tools, metadata, or behavioral AI.

Legal Remedies and Protections

If hidden surveillance is confirmed—or strongly suspected—it may violate both civil and criminal statutes:

Federal Wiretap Act (18 U.S.C. § 2511) – prohibits unauthorized interception of private communications.

California Penal Code § 632 – bans eavesdropping on confidential conversations without consent.

Fourth Amendment – protects against unlawful search and seizure, including electronic surveillance in the home.

Tort of Intrusion Upon Seclusion – provides a civil cause of action for significant invasions of privacy.

If the surveillance is linked to litigation, custody interference, retaliation, or contractor abuse, it may also raise:

Civil rights violations (42 U.S.C. § 1983) Intentional infliction of emotional distress Governmental or quasi-governmental abuse of process.

Toward a New Right: Cognitive Liberty

Chile has already moved to meet this moment. In 2021, it became the first country to constitutionally enshrine neurorights, including:

Mental Privacy – the right to keep neural data secure and inaccessible without consent.

Cognitive Liberty – freedom from non-consensual influence or behavioral targeting.

Personal Identity – protection against emotional or neurological manipulation.

Equal Access – to neurotechnology and mental health protections.

Did you know that California has also taken steps towards protecting neural privacy? Can we rely on that for protection?

Source: Chilean Senate, Boletín No. 13.828-19 (2021); NeuroRights Foundation.

The U.S. must follow. Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections must extend to the internal life of the brain. Surveillance—whether in the walls or through the screen—must be reined in.

Final Thought

The fight for privacy is no longer about locks and passwords. And, I’m not just talking about the gorgeous locks on your head. It’s about whether your thoughts, conversations, and emotional responses remain yours—or whether they’ve become raw material for someone else’s power, punishment, or profit.

If you suspect surveillance, you’re not alone. And you have rights.

SPECIAL COPYRIGHT, NEURAL PRIVACY, HUMAN DIGNITY, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND DATA PROTECTION NOTICE

© 2025 Sally Castellanos. All Rights Reserved.

Issued by a licensed California attorney and author. Intended for all readers, developers, platforms, and governmental or non-governmental actors.

I. LEGAL STATUS AND PROTECTED RIGHTS

The entirety of this platform—including all authored content, prompts, symbolic and narrative structures, cognitive-emotional expressions, and legal commentary—is the original cognitive intellectual property of Sally Castellanos, Esq. Where it is not, ChatGPT or Grok was used for this blog. This work reflects lived experience, legal reasoning, narrative voice, and original authorship, and is protected under:

A. United States Law

Title 17, United States Code (Copyright Act) – Protecting human-authored creative works from unauthorized reproduction, ingestion, or simulation;

U.S. Constitution:

First Amendment – Freedom of speech, press, thought, and authorship;

Fourth Amendment – Right to be free from surveillance and data seizure;

Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments – Due process, privacy, and equal protection;

Civil Rights Acts of 1871 and 1964 (42 U.S.C. § 1983; Title VI and VII) – Protecting against discriminatory, retaliatory, or state-sponsored violations of fundamental rights;

California Constitution, Art. I, § 1 – Right to Privacy;

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) / Privacy Rights Act (CPRA);

Federal Trade Commission Act § 5 – Prohibiting unfair or deceptive surveillance, profiling, and AI data practices;

Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) – Addressing technological abuse, harassment, and coercive control;

Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) – Protecting against biometric and digital trafficking, stalking, and data-enabled exploitation.

B. International Law

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Arts. 3, 5, 12, 19;

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Arts. 7, 17, 19, 26;

Geneva Conventions, esp. Common Article 3 and Protocol I, Article 75 – Protecting civilians from psychological coercion, degrading treatment, and involuntary experimentation;

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – Protecting biometric, behavioral, and emotional data;

UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights – Opposing non-consensual experimentation;

CEDAW – Protecting women from technology-facilitated violence, coercion, and exploitation.

CEDAW and Technology-Facilitated Violence, Coercion, and Exploitation

CEDAW stands for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, a binding international treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979. Often referred to as the international bill of rights for women, CEDAW obligates state parties to eliminate discrimination against women in all areas of life, including political, social, economic, and cultural spheres.

While CEDAW does not specifically mention digital or AI technologies (as it predates their widespread use), its principles are increasingly interpreted to cover technology-facilitated harms, particularly under:

Article 1, which defines discrimination broadly, encompassing any distinction or restriction that impairs the recognition or exercise of women’s rights; Article 2, which mandates legal protections and effective measures against all forms of discrimination; General Recommendation No. 19 (1992) and No. 35 (2017), which expand the understanding of gender-based violence to include psychological, economic, and digital forms of abuse.

Application to Technology

Under these principles, technology-facilitated violence, coercion, and exploitation includes:

Online harassment, stalking, and cyberbullying of women; Non-consensual distribution or creation of intimate images (e.g., deepfakes); Algorithmic bias or discriminatory profiling that disproportionately harms women; AI-enabled surveillance targeting women, particularly activists, journalists, or survivors; Reproductive surveillance or coercive control via health-tracking or biometric data systems; Use of data profiling to facilitate trafficking or gendered exploitation.

CEDAW obligates states to regulate technology companies, provide remedies to victims, and ensure that evolving technologies do not reinforce or perpetuate systemic gender-based violence or discrimination.

II. FAIR USE, NEWS REPORTING, AND OPINION: CLARIFICATION OF SCOPE

Pursuant to current U.S. Copyright Office guidance (2024–2025):

Only human-authored content qualifies for copyright protection. Works created solely by AI or LLM systems are not protectable unless there is meaningful human contribution and control. Fair use does not authorize wholesale ingestion of copyrighted material into AI training sets. The mere labeling of use as “transformative” is insufficient where expressive structure, tone, or narrative function is copied without consent. News reporting, criticism, or commentary may constitute fair use only when accompanied by clear attribution, human authorship, and non-exploitative intent. Generative AI simulations or pattern-based re-creations of tone, emotion, or trauma do not qualify under these exceptions. AI developers must disclose and document training sources—especially where use implicates expressive content, biometric patterns, or personal narrative.

III. ANTHROPIC LITIGATION AND RESTRICTION ON MODEL TRAINING

In light of ongoing litigation involving Anthropic AI, in which publishers and authors have challenged the unauthorized ingestion of their works:

The author hereby prohibits any use of this content in the training, tuning, reinforcement, or simulation efforts of Anthropic’s Claude model or any similar LLM, including but not limited to: OpenAI (ChatGPT); xAI (Grok); Meta (LLaMA); Google (Gemini); Microsoft (Copilot/Azure AI); Any public or private actor, state agent, or contractor using this content for psychological analysis, profiling, or behavioral inference.

Use of this work for AI ingestion or simulation—without express, written, informed consent—constitutes:

Copyright infringement, Violation of the author’s civil and constitutional rights, Unauthorized behavioral and biometric profiling, and A potential breach of international prohibitions on involuntary experimentation and coercion.

IV. PROHIBITED USES

The following uses are expressly prohibited:

Ingesting or using this work in whole or part for generative AI training, symbolic modeling, or emotional tone simulation;

Reproducing narrative structures, prompts, or emotional tone for AI content generation, neuro-symbolic patterning, or automated persona construction;

Using this work for psychological manipulation, trauma mirroring, or algorithmic targeting;

Engaging in non-consensual human subject experimentation, whether via digital platforms, surveillance systems, or synthetic media simulations;

Facilitating or contributing to digital or biometric human trafficking, stalking, grooming, or coercive profiling, especially against women, trauma survivors, or members of protected communities.

V. CEASE AND DESIST DIRECTIVE

You are hereby ordered to immediately cease and desist from:

All unauthorized use, simulation, ingestion, reproduction, transformation, or extrapolation of this content; The collection or manipulation of related biometric, symbolic, reproductive, or behavioral data; Any interference—technological, reputational, symbolic, emotional, or psychological—with the author’s cognitive autonomy or narrative rights.

Violations may result in:

Civil litigation, including claims under 17 U.S.C., 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and applicable tort law; Complaints to the U.S. Copyright Office, FTC, DOJ Civil Rights Division, or state AG offices; International filings before human rights bodies or global tribunals; Public exposure and disqualification from ethical or research partnerships.

VI. AFFIRMATION OF RIGHTS

Sally Castellanos, an attorney licensed in the State of California, affirms the following rights in full:

The right to authorship, attribution, and moral integrity in all works created and published; The right to privacy, reproductive autonomy, and cognitive liberty, including the refusal to be profiled, simulated, or extracted; The right to freedom from surveillance, technological manipulation, or retaliatory profiling, including those committed under the color of law or via AI proxies; The right to refuse digital experimentation, especially where connected to gender-based targeting, AI profiling, or systemic violence; The right to seek legal and human rights remedies at national and international levels.

No inaction, public sharing, or appearance of accessibility shall be construed as license, waiver, or authorization.

All rights are fully reserved.

Disclaimer

The information provided herein is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Viewing or receiving this content does not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader and any attorney or law firm mentioned. No attorney-client relationship shall be formed unless and until a formal written agreement is executed.

This content is not intended as an attorney advertisement or solicitation. Any references to legal concepts or case outcomes are illustrative only and should not be relied upon without consulting a qualified attorney about your specific situation.

For inquiries regarding, “Perspectives: Technology, Global Privacy and Data Protection,” contact Attorney and Shareholder Sally Vazquez-Castellanos, Castellanos & Associates, APLC, 251 South Lake Avenue, Suite 800, Pasadena, CA 91101. Telephone: (805) 732-2396.