Surveillance Countermeasures: A Serious Guide to ... - Paladin Press

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ecause of business affiliations is vastly increased. This expandingthreat is further compounded by the ever-increasing practice ofindustrial espionage conducted between competing businesses.Criminal, terrorist, and espionage organizations also employ surveillancein support of efforts to recruit or coerce individuals to provideinformation or other types of support. To this end, surveillanceis employed to develop exploitable information on unwitting individuals.Those confronted with exploitable evidence developedthrough surveillance may be forced to cooperate rather than riskhaving the information disclosed to their families, employers, or thepublic. Attributes and vices such as infidelity, homosexuality, alcoholism,and drug abuse are some common examples of the limitlessoptions possible for such blackmail operations. As a corollary, themajority of surveillance activities conducted by private investigativeagencies are undertaken to confirm or deny whether an individual isconducting similar types of activities. Even individuals with noreadily exploitable attributes can be manipulated into compromisingsituations to develop the leverage necessary for coercion.Regardless of the nature of the threat, surveillance can bedetected and defeated through the effective use of surveillancecountermeasures. This book addresses the principles that havedeveloped into time-proven methods of countering the mostsophisticated surveillance techniques. Importantly in this age ofterrorism, the very same surveillance countermeasures that areapplicable to the detection of preoperational surveillance canprove critical when hostile elements are actually in the act of acrime or attack. This is the point when operators must exposethemselves and are consequently most vulnerable to detection.Proficiency in the techniques of observation and surveillancecountermeasures is an effective means to prevent the act orenable individuals to avoid the threat when in harm’s way.Surveillance countermeasures can be categorized as either surveillancedetection or antisurveillance. The former is employed todetect the presence of a possible or suspected surveillance, whilethe latter is employed to elude a suspected or detected surveillance.Both methods are further categorized into distinct disciplines.In general terms, surveillance can be categorized as either physicalor technical. Accordingly, surveillance countermeasures can beeither physical or technical, based on the nature of threat. PhysicalIntroduction to Surveillance Countermeasures3
surveillance requires the direct involvement of the human element,which simply means that it must involve physical observation of thetarget by an individual or a team of surveillants. For this reason,physical surveillance assumes a degree of exposure of the effort tothe individual under surveillance. Surveillance countermeasures areemployed to maximize this exposure or to force surveillance operatorsto terminate contact in order to avoid exposure. Technical surveillanceuses such equipment as remotely monitored video cameras,listening devises or “bugs,” telephone monitors or “taps,” andmotion-monitoring beaconing devices to observe, monitor, orrecord the target’s activities. Technical surveillance devices are vulnerableto both physical inspection and technical detection.While the technical-surveillance concepts detailed in thisbook are still largely relevant, based on the emergent threat environmentthe physical surveillance countermeasures addressedherein have become invaluable. Many elements that conduct surveillanceactivities are either unable or unwilling to rely heavilyon technical surveillance means, primarily because of the sophisticationof technical detection capabilities and the unacceptablerisk of compromise. For this reason, the majority rely exclusivelyon the time-tested physical techniques that involve human operatorswho can think, react, and terminate the surveillance if necessaryrather than compromise an operation.Again, based on the new reality, the techniques documented inthis book are more widely applicable to security professionals andvulnerable citizens than when originally presented in 1994. In fact,the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s 2020 Project, titled“Mapping the Global Future,” predicts a steady increase in threats toa wide range of individuals based on the disturbing trend of “pervasiveinsecurity”—one that is expected to continue well into the secondquarter of the 21st century. As a parting and practical example,in May 2000, an al Qaeda terrorist organization training manual wasseized in a safe house in Europe. One of the manual’s chapters is dedicatedto covert surveillance and addresses the development and utilizationof exploitable information as a primary method of coercingindividuals into support of the cause. As a testament to the enduringrelevance of this text, each of the surveillance techniques addressedin the terrorist training manual are detailed in this book, with correspondingand exacting countermeasures.4 Surveillance Countermeasures
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Surveillance Countermeasures: A Serious Guide to ... - Paladin Press

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