Do Your Own Surveillance
Do Your Own Surveillance
By Dick Bowan
In a addition to finding people and using background checks, there is the need for surveillance in extreme circumstances. Surveillance is not just going to a site and then walking around. An overall plan is produced centering on a basic pattern and backed up with the use of many signals and communications much like a basketball or football team, or a special forces unit would use.
Individual training includes teaching the skills below.
Listening Skills
Being able to listen to things that you might find offensive, hurtful, and harmful without getting angry and thus giving away what you are doing. Most people, if they hear something they do not like or strongly disagree with, their face will show it. It takes much practice to learn how to control that flushing of red in your face when someone says something you find offensive. This can include looking at a book while pretending to read it and being able to listen to the gun transaction taking place four feet away. You must learn to examine something while listening at the same time. The main idea here is to avoid hint of emotion or increased interest which may give you away.
Learning Deception and Lying
This means being able to tell someone that you are something that you are not. An entire body of science has been created to teach the vocal skills, body language, and temperament of how to look sincere when you are actually lying.
Relating and Using Scripted Behavior and Conversation
In dealing with professionals, or a suspect with special interests, agents are trained to learn the language and knowledge of the particular interests of the target. You have to talk about something that is of interest to the target such as a TV show or movie.
Use of Body Language
You should not do surveillance on a target by yourself. It is best to work with someone else. At a gun show, if an agent hits a "hot" conversation, he may scratch behind one ear to call for reinforcements in listening to the conversation. This allows you to flood a spot and overhear key deals being made or discussed at gun shows. Agents are also taught to move and flow together so that each one picks up part of the conversation and it is pieced together later. This allows for the group to mimic the normal flow of traffic in the show without appearing obvious. Hand and eye signals are used to control the flow of traffic by the agents when they are following "bomb book buyers" certain foreigners, and the like. A barely noticeable movement may be used to tell one agent to walk around him because he is on a hot target and needs to stay in one location. There are counter surveillance techniques that can be used to foil spying. These techniques center around disrupting the flow and movement of a group of agents in a venue. It is surprisingly easy to use counter surveillance tactics once you understand how to disrupt the flow of traffic by the agents. This is a technique that I will discuss in another article.
About the Author: By Dick Bowan writer for DetectiveU. For more DIY surveillance information go to http://www.detectiveu.com/category/mobile-surveillance
Source: www.isnare.com
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