“Birdwatching Pretext”

There is a small black cat in our office, a Tuxedo Tom who thinks he owns the joint.
Tux lives in a different world because his eyesight and hearing are better than mine,
but the lesson learned is about his curiosity. When he hears a strange sound he has
to go check it out, even if it comes from the other end of the building!
   Our offices are next to a park and have floor to ceiling windows so there is always
something going on. The cat goes from one window to another, even at night when
I’m working late. That is a lot of running around for a little black cat.   
   The message for us humans is to be cat-curious about our surroundings. You may
take a different route to work, park in a different spot, use a different entrance, or take
some other action to give you a different look at where you work and live. Look for the
odd, the strange, the out of place. Satisfy your curiosity.
   The Cat Says “Go Look”

   If a spy taps into your communication system he may capture confidential data, but it will be fragmented, bits and pieces. He won’t know how you plan to use the information or if the information is real. It could be bogus, part of a disinformation campaign to lead you off track and sap your resources. Some countries are so good at this that their agents with “Fingerspitzengefuhl,”do nothing but plant missleading data.
   Spies may bug your communication systems, but they are more likely to develop information on a communications clerk or other target who knows the inside story. The target’s hobbies and personal activities provide specific topics for the initial contact and can open the floodgates of inside information. As they say, “Catch a fish and you have fish for a day, catch a fisherman and you have fish for a lifetime.”  
   If the spy uses “One Step Beyond” technique the contact may not even know he is a target.
More about this later when we have more time.

Eavesdropping Name Eavesdropping Named
   My Ph.D. Thesis “Spies & Private Lives – The Evolution of Eavesdropping from 1656 – 1982” was published in 1982. That is a long time ago. It was hard work, hours of research, and the realization
of how little I knew about eavesdropping. My Mentor had a vicious sense of humor and often said that most of us were as dumb as doorknobs on the subject. Looking back on it now I have to agree.
   I found where the name “eavesdropping” came from early in my research. One of the old Spy Masters in England said he knew what people were saying against the Crown in every country inn in the Kingdom, especially those within 50 miles of London. The inns had thatched roofs at that time with a gap up under the eaves to let the smoke out. Spies could duck up under the eaves at night and hear what was being said on the other side of the wall. Bits and pieces, loose talk, plotting. Enough to take a dissident to the headman’s block.

Talkin be Easy

“Talkin be easy
  Doin be hard”

   Do you remember these words from the beloved childhood story of talking critters and good advice? The words are especially appropriate now as we study business espionage controls and countermeasures.
   It is true that what people say is much less important than what they do. My years as a government Investigator taught me this, along with feedback from hundreds of Business Espionage Controls & Countermeasures Association (BECCA) members.
   Yes, some people do lie through their teeth, most often about money and sex. I understand that. Much of what we ask as we hunt spies is seen by the public as private information. It is easier to say nothing, tell a half-truth, or lie. In fairness it must be said that bad memory and bad information are more common than outright lies.
   Three questions will help put what we are told in better perspective.
    (1) Who says? Who is really talking? Is the person speaking for someone else?
    (2) Why do they say it? Do they have a bias that distorts the truth? Some other agenda?
    (3) What do we know for sure? What can we verify as a starting place in this investigation?

Technical Insights
15×52 HD Binoculars
                 +
Cellphone Adapter

  The Gigapenguin 15×52 Binoculars we tested came with a snap-on cellphone adapter that allows the user to take pictures with the phone and then remove the phone and the adapter quickly if they are about to be discovered. Spies would take pictures, remove the phone and adapter from the binoculars in one easy motion, and then send the pictures on to their private e-mail account to clear their phone.
   The large binocular lenses provide good low light vision and better pictures at a distance than smaller units. The box the binoculars came is lists seven uses. Bird watching is first on the list, then viewing wildlife, stargazing, hiking, sports, travel, and concerts. As always in real life, birders watch birds and spies use birding as cover. Spies may be spying on you and your activities as part of a business investigation, or for some other reason you may not be aware of.  
  “Stargazing” is a good excuse for being on the roof of a building some distance from a business or personal target. Spies “hiking” near a target use birding as cover and gather all the information they need for cover by membership in local birding groups. The pictures they take through their cell phones are immediately forwarded to their private e-mail accounts so the phones they have with them are empty of incriminating material and contain only pictures of birds. Perfect cover for spies, hard for victims to prove.

from Spy School in Parrot Park (Amazon Books)

   “Death is part of many religiose ceremonies, death & redemption a culture of hope for many to carry them through the trying times that are part of every life. Sarah accepted death as a natural part of the process but not now, at some later time, not now here in a Ghillie suit in the dark on a brushy hillside.
Sarah Fowler wasn’t like other people. Most people look, but don’t really see, they listen, but don’t really hear. Sarah wasn’t like that. She was an experienced birder and a trained observer despite her young age. She was also a Spytreker, an amateur spy with her own agenda.”
Ghillie suits are camoflage suits once worn by English Camekeepers hunting poachers and now by birdwatchers hunting birds and spies with their own targets. Ghillie suits come in several sizes and colors to fit the brush on the hill overlooking an industrial park, the seashore, or many other locations.
You can buy your own ghillie suit on line at Amazon and then take pictures of owls at night on an Owl Prowls, or sea birds from the woods near the harbor. I almost stepped on a birder at one such location!

“Birding Babylon”
  One of the interesting books in my library is “Birding Babylon – A Soldier’s Journal from Iraq” by Sergeant Jonathan Trouern-Trend. He wrote a blog and added 122 species of birds to his Life List while deployed with the 118^th Area Support Medical Battalion of the Connecticut NG in Iraq and Kuwait, beginning in 2024. His list includes seven kinds of sea birds, plus Kites, Vultures, Hawks and Eagles.   
I am always interested in Falcons and featured them in my first book in the Ian Scott series. The Sergeant lists five Falcons on his Life List.
The Lesser kestrel, Falco naumanni,
Kestrel, Falco tinnunculus
Merlin, Falco columbarius
Hobby, Falco Subbuteo
Saker falcon, Falco cherrug   
This is a small hard-cover book. The bird pictures are small, not in full color, and only useful as outlines. I enjoyed this little book despite its short comings. It is nice to see something from that part of the world that is not political.

Spies & Private Lives
   You ask “Am I really a target, or are the burglar alarm and other security companies just blowing smoke in my ear?”
   It’s true that some of the security websites have enough BS to fertilize a truck garden, but most security people are pretty straight forward. They know there is more to security than Guards, Gates, and Guns. Business secrets need to be protected along with other company assets. Security guards may not know business espionage controls and countermeasures, but they do know perimeter control and that’s basic and very important.
 Don’t take my word for it. You can help determine your own risk level by asking yourself these questions:

Are you doing something for your company that would be of special interest to foreign competitors or other outsiders?Are you responsible for developing new products or services?
Do you provide managerial, technical, legal, or other support for new projects?
Are you working on high-profile projects that attract media attention?    
Have there been phone calls, emails, and social media contacts that indicate outsiders are interested in you or your business dealings?
Trust your instincts but know that espionage is difficult to prove.  

   Quote: 

   “Espionage is a crime almost devoid of evidence, which is why intuition, for better or worse, always has a large part to play in its successful detection.” (Peter Wright, Spycatcher, nonfiction)

Now Don’t Get Me Wrong!
   Yes, birding is The Perfect Pretext for spies, and all birders are spies, if you look at it that way.
The birds didn’t ask us to spy on their lives, their nests or their babies. The difference between birders and other spies is intentions, it’s as simple as that. We do not watch birds to do them harm.
   Spies use birding for cover as they video on the hillside near an industrial lab or go on owl prowls at night in the city. They don’t really care about birds, they just use them as cover as they look for weak links in the informational chain, something or someone they can exploit.   
  I believe “Birds Are Beacons of Hope,” as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology said in their mailer when it was time to renew my membership. Most birders I know think like that. Birders are good people.

Greetings   
   It is vacation time again for many of us! Birders are everywhere and bird books are great conversation starters for anyone on vacation. One of the bird books I like is by the real James Bond and is for sale on Amazon Books. I have a copy in my library.   
   The real James Bond was an American ornithologist who lived in Jamaica and wrote “Birds of the West Indies.”  Ian Fleming was a British novelist, Navy officer, and sometimes spy who lived down the road from James Bond on the island. Fleming stole the Bond name off a roadside mailbox and didn’t know Bond at the time but met him later.
   The “James Bond” name on the cover of a bird book is a great conversation starter! We have met some wonderful people that way.  
   Maxon