Counter-Surveillance – The Driveby Honeypot

We are going to dedicate this one to our friends in real law-enforcement surveillance, whom we respect, and definitely do not want to end up on any watchlists with. Or at least any more watchlists than we are already on. They will probably be showing up around me at some point for reasons beyond the scope of this post, though clearly I have not seen any yet.

Suppose for a minute you are legitimate law enforcement surveillance assigned to do a drive-by of a legitimate law enforcement surveillance target. You are driving by, and see, by the side of the road, a car parked, with a for-sale sign on it, right next to the target residence. What do you do?

If there is one thing surveillance wants to do, it is loiter by a target. A car for sale offers excellent “Cover for Action,” also known as an excuse to be stopped and standing around a target’s residence so you don’t arouse suspicion. So you stop, and walk around the car while scoping the target residence next door. Maybe you break out your phone to take pictures of the car, framing it so the target’s residence is in the background. Then you drive off with your little booty of intelligence, much more than the cameras on your car would have captured merely driving by at normal speeds. You feel like a success.

Now suppose you are an operative of the criminal surveillance operation in the US, most likely the same operation which targeted White House Officials with Havana Syndrome attacks while they were on White House grounds. The type of operation which puts a sign telling cars how fast they are driving at the entrance of a neighborhood with a hidden camera to catch images of everyone coming and going into the neighborhood, illuminated at night by the lights of the sign.

You run an observation post set up next to a target of your operation. You’re plugged into his house, watching his internet, and running the residence part of his coverage. In the course of that, you realize that for reasons totally not of his own making, he is about to fall under regular Law Enforcement surveillance. Which will probably begin with, say, oh, Secret Service surveillance drive-bys.

Your criminal operation is operating against Secret Service, targeting their protectees, so Secret Service is a target of your operation as well. Any intelligence you can gather on their ground surveillance will be very valuable to your command. But how do you separate the Surveillance Drivebys going on in front of your house from all the other traffic? It is actually fairly simple. You find a car which will not appeal to most people, and put it up for sale in front of your house, right next to the target residence.

Now every time surveillance is driving by, it will want to stop and get out and pretend to look at the car, while all other traffic will pass it by. Since you are a surveillance op, you have already put top notch covert cameras all over the front of your driveway, so every time a surveillance vehicle stops by, you get all the details on the vehicle, hi-res imagery of the driver, and you get good video of their procedures and techniques for loitering for purposes of surveillance. They drive off feeling like they just hit the jackpot, and the reality is they were burned by your opposition, and will now not be as effective in the future. They will probably end up with their own surveillance living next door in the not to distant future.

It is basically a great way to burn your opposition’s surveillance operatives, and it requires almost no investment to accomplish. If I were legit LE surveillance, I would never stop to look at any cars which happened to be for sale next to a target residence. I would just drive right by.

Spread r/K Theory, because sometimes you don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth because you don’t want to go near it to begin with.