Basic Surveillance and Surveillance Detection

INTRODUCTION

• All hostile acts begin with hostile surveillance or investigation.

• Intelligence officers must accept that they will be targeted for hostile surveillance.

• In foreign environments, they must learn to live and operate comfortably within this framework.

• To operate comfortably and effectively in hostile environments requires knowledge, skill and above all, self-discipline.

• Consequences of failure in hostile environment entail risk to: – Critical national security information – The lives of informants – In some cases, the life of the intelligence officer himself

Goals of this Course

• Knowledge – Know and recognize the common modes of surveillance employed around the world – Understand the strengths and weaknesses of the modes and types of surveillance • Skills – Learn specific techniques to detect and deter hostile surveillance – Practice and perfect the techniques in a non-hostile environment

Covert Surveillance

• Intended strictly to develop information without affecting the target’s behavior

Types of Surveillance

• Fixed surveillance • Solo mobile surveillance • Multiple mobile surveillance • Mixed operations • Technical surveillance

Fixed Surveillance

• Does not move or visibly react to target’s actions • Strengths: – Difficult to detect • Weaknesses: – Requires large amounts of resources against moving targets – If covert, requires elaborate cover

Solo mobile surveillance

• A single mobile operator following a target • Typical of unsophisticated police/private investigators • Strengths: – Small investment in resources • Weaknesses: – Very vulnerable to detection – Must mirror target’s movements

Segmented Solo Mobile Surveillance: A sub-set

• Follows target in segments over extended time period • May involve multiple operators, working as individuals • Strengths: – Far less vulnerable to detection – Small investment in resources • Weaknesses – Requires that target operate predictably – Takes a long time to work (weeks at minimum)

Multiple Mobile Surveillance

• Multiple operators working against a moving target • Typical of more sophisticated government operations (police, clandestine services) • Strengths: – Difficult to detect – Avoids showing target the same operators twice • Weaknesses: – Requires extensive training, practice and superior area knowledge – Requires skilled coordination/direction – Large investment in resources

Examples of Multiple Mobile Surveillance

• ABC: The “street dance” • Paralleling • Envelopment: The “bubble”

Situational Awareness

• Situational Awareness – What is it?

– Why is it necessary?

– How to practice a sustainable, relaxed level of awareness

Situational Awareness

• Situational Awareness – What is it?

• Definition – Mindset or attitude not just an action – What it is NOT

Situational Awareness

• Situational Awareness – Why is it necessary?

Situational Awareness

• Situational Awareness – Levels of Awareness • Tuned-out • Relaxed • Focused • High Alert • Comatose

Situational Awareness

• Situational Awareness – Levels of Awareness • What is the proper level of awareness?

• Shifting levels

Special Skills: Surveillance Detection for Meeting Security

Awareness Practice

• Train your mind to remember, and effectively communicate, detailed descriptive information.

• Pick a person on the street. Look at him briefly, and describe him to yourself.

• Wait an hour or two, then write down the description.

Effective Descriptions

• Policeman’s description: – Caucasian male – 60 years old – 1.8 meters tall – 100 kilos – Short gray hair, brown eyes, mustache • OK for police work

Effective Descriptions

• Counter-surveillance operator’s description: – Police description, plus: – Brown boots – Walks like a farmer – Smokes Marlboro cigarettes – Also smokes a pipe – Sean Connery

Superior Area Knowledge

• Officers must have intimate knowledge of the cities in which they work.

• Newly assigned officers should be allowed ample time and resources to study their areas of operation (AORs) before being given operational assignments – Map study – On-ground familiarization – SDR design and practice

Surveillance Detection Routes (SDRs)

• Intelligence professionals use

surveillance detection routes every time they must take a discreet meeting with a source or handler.

• They learn and use a variety of

routes and meeting sites and times, choosing them at random. This works to defeat fixed surveillance.

• A well-designed and executed SDR

gets you to your meeting on time – unaccompanied – and without alerting potential watchers.

Design and Practice

• The only way to run a perfect SDR is

to design it ahead of time - and practice it.

• It must give you multiple

opportunities to see potential watchers.

• It should include a number of moves

that allow you to look back – all of which must be smooth and appear natural to observers.

• In order to appear natural, there

must be an apparent reason, i.e., “cover” for each of your moves.

• Let’s look at some of the moves:

Parallel Movement

• Using a map, plot the most direct

and logical route from your starting point to the meeting site.

• Your SDR should parallel, cross and

envelope this direct route, always tending toward the meeting site.

• Remember, your goal is to get to the

meeting unaccompanied, but without alerting potential watchers.

Turns

• Turns at natural corners give you a

chance to look back and see who is behind you.

• More importantly, a turn forces

followers to react to your movement.

• If you make a turn, there must

eventually be a logical reason for it: A stop at a bank or store, for example.

Stairstepping

• Stairstepping is a more sophisticated

(and provocative) version of the simple turn.

• It means making a series of left and

right turns, usually chosen in a grid pattern of streets.

• As a rule of thumb, you can assume

that anyone who is still behind you after 3 or 4 turns in a stairstep pattern is following you.

• Because it is provocative, a stairstep

pattern MUST be followed immediately by a logical stop. Which brings us to:

Stops

• Stopping on an SDR is a powerful

detection tool if used correctly.

• Choose a store or other business

with a glass front that will allow you to see what happens outside. Gas stations are also good.

• Make it natural: Buy gas, buy a

newspaper, get coffee. As you enter, remember who stops with you, who enters shortly after you stop, or who slows down and looks as they pass your stop.

Channeling

• A channel is a section of your route

chosen to force surveillance to follow directly behind you, giving you a powerful detection opportunity.

• If you are the target of a multiple

team, an effective channel will force all or most of the team to get behind you in a line. This is called a wagon train.

• Examples of effective channels are

long bridges, well-lit tunnels, and sections of highway without exits or overpasses.

Reversals

• A reversal is basically a U-turn that allows

you to look back naturally, and that forces surveillance to react to or mirror your movement.

• Reversals are highly provocative and, again,

must be followed by a stop that explains the reversal.

• An example of a good reversal is to choose a

stop (store or gas station) on the opposite side of a divided street. Go past the stop to the next crossover, make the U-turn, do the stop, then make another crossover to get back onto your route.

• This whole operation (actually a double

reversal) will force surveillance to either stop on the original route, replace a follower with another, or mirror your movements.

Dry Cleaning

• On foot, enter a crowded building with

multiple exits. Large department stores and shopping malls are good.

• Surveillance will be forced to enter with you,

since they can’t know what exit you will use.

• Use stops, reversals and stairstepping

inside, to detect surveillance that may have followed you in.

• Leave by a different exit. • Obviously, don’t try this if you are driving

unless you are able to leave your car where it is and proceed: Surveillance will simply set up on your car and wait until you come back to it.

Breakout

• There is only one SDR technique that works to detect a well operated hostile “bubble”: – You must move, swiftly and decisively, at 90 degrees to your general direction of travel, for at least 4 blocks, and immediately resume travel along the original direction.

– This “breaks” through the bubble and forces it to re-deploy around you.

– It is a provocative move, and must include a cover stop fairly soon after resuming directional travel.

While Driving

• Principles are the same as for pedestrian operations • Remember your car may be more easily identified than you are number plates, cannot change color/model) • Practice memorizing license plates, including in mirrors • At night, memorize head light patterns

What Are You Looking For?

• It’s deceptively simple: You are

looking for the same cars or people over time and distance.

• The logical question is always:

Why am I seeing this car or person again, across town and after doing my SDR, when I saw him an hour ago in a different place and environment?

• If there is no innocuous and

logical answer to that question, you are under surveillance.

ANOMALIES

• What does hostile surveillance look like? • It tries to look like nothing at all. However,

hostile surveillance operators make mistakes. When they do, the skilled protective surveillance team will detect them:

• Multiple sightings over time and distance • People who don’t “fit in” to the environment

(dress, nationality)

• Demeanor: Furtive behavior • Photography and optics • Note taking • Poor cover • Coordinated behavior and other links • Use of OPs and other suspicious positioning

Timing Stops and Final Moves

• Your SDR has taken you across town

to the vicinity of the meeting site.

• You have not detected surveillance

and believe you are “clean”.

• If you have planned and practiced,

there should be a few spare minutes before the agreed meeting time.

• You should go PAST the meeting site

to a “timing stop” that gives you a natural reason to wait, plus a final opportunity to look for surveillance. Have coffee, watch your back, and at the appointed time, go direct to your SAFE meeting.

Demeanor

• Remember, the goal is to detect

surveillance without alerting it that you are operational.

• Suspicious or “lurking” behavior is

easy to spot. Act natural and relax.

• When communicating by cell phone,

don’t try to hide it. Everyone uses cell phones and surveillance has no way of knowing who you are talking to (with one exception that we will address in the next slide).

• Don’t try to hide your face. If you

have surveillance, they already know what you look like.

Cover

• Officers must be provided, and must “live” credible cover “legends” throughout the period of their assignments.

• Their actions must be consistent with their legends at all times – including when they are non-operational (i.e., “off duty”).

• Officers should role-play, with partners, being challenged and interrogated to insure smooth maintenance of their cover, both for status and action.

Disguises

• Intention is not to conceal identity • Intention is to confuse and obfuscate communication of identifying information • Light disguises best: Hats, clothing changes • Things that don’t change as easily: – Body language – Habits (smoking) – Shoes

Trade Craft: Communications

• The safest way to communicate clandestine information is verbally, in face-to-face, unobserved meetings. This is the purpose of the SDR.

• If the passing of recorded information is necessary in a meeting, the safest way to do this is in the most innocuous and natural way possible.

• “Spy-like” techniques are usually unnecessarily risky and provocative, if observed. “Dead drops” and their like are especially risky, both to people and to information.

• When absolutely necessary, physically small storage media such as computer thumb drives can be transferred using well-practiced “brush passes”.

Training and discipline of informants

• “Informants must be taught, and must always use, the same level of security awareness and suveillance detection techniques as their handlers!

Aborting the Meeting

• There are few circumstances under which

should you attend a clandestine meeting if you believe you are being followed (emergencies are an exception).

• Have a pre-arranged cell phone abort signal.

A simple phone call in which your number appears on your handler’s screen is sufficient.

• In case both you and your handler are being

watched by surveillants in communication with one another, this is one phone call that should be made clandestinely. Have the number pre-dialed and press the call button without raising the phone above your waist.

• When aborting a meeting, go to the nearest

logical stop, stay there long enough for cover purposes, and then vacate the area.

Intuition

• “Surveillance Paranoia” is commonly felt,

especially when you’re first starting out.

• HOWEVER: It is also true that the “feeling”

we sometimes get of being followed is absolutely accurate; the information is still in our subconscious.

• You should not ignore these intuitions. Use

your SDR techniques to verify or negate them.

• In extreme cases, deploy a defensive

counter-surveillance operation.

• Finally, try to see things through the eyes of

potential hostile surveillance: In their place, what would I be doing?