‘Sweeping’ is a highly sophisticated process and it protects those individuals or corporations with an interest in keeping their intellectual property and private lives secure.

Robust, active and proactive TSCM is a requirement for protecting classified information, trade secrets, important business information and intellectual property. These days, organizations with a good technical counter intelligence program are protected. Those without are ‘had’ every day. There is a threat and it is live and very active. It is also different from the cold war where the KGB and the NSA were the main players.

These days, every nation and many non-national organizations maintain a capability to conduct technical attacks against their competitors and adversaries.  Some of them are active every day, are well funded, trained, and are particularly active against our domestic industries. Their technical attacks are remotely controlled, and facilities are watched for activities – the high level actors understand operational security, or OPSEC, and want to know when the sweep team arrives.

In today’s world, all of our traditional Allies are collecting information to use against us. These are national level interests with well funded, researched, developed and planned resources at their disposal. Not only are we up against the EBay ‘GSM spy ear’, we are up against well funded organizations who spend a lot of money on getting clandestine technical surveillance devices inside our facilities. We need professional countermeasures systems that are designed to look for such devices.

In today’s fast-paced economy, most organizations, executives or TSCM sweepers often find themselves in situations where they either don’t have the time, or, they are not in a situation where they can conduct a traditional time consuming TSCM inspection using regular instrumentation.  Such circumstances include:

• Short notice classified or sensitive discussions held in rooms that have never been swept and for which there isn’t time or access to surrounding infrastructure (adjacent rooms) to perform a traditional inspection
• Classified or sensitive discussions held ‘off-site’ at conference venues and ‘corporate retreats’ where there isn’t access to surrounding infrastructure and where physical disruption of the local environment is not possible
• The desire to have confidential conversations ‘on the fly’ between executives, lawyers and clients
• Failure of the regular sweep team to be timely and responsive to the modern threat

In these circumstances the TSCM inspector or executive sweep team needs a set of procedures and access to equipment and security products to be effective where traditional techniques simply are inefficient and where ‘time on target’ by the sweep professional is simply limited.

In this discussion we will talk about tactics, instrumentation and procedures (TIPs) that complete the TSCM cycle by imparting the ability to the professional sweeper to effectively Detect, Analyze, Locate and Respond to the threat. The TIPs that I will discuss come from many years of observing and assisting UK, US and Canadian professional teams who have been trained by the NSA, GCHQ, the RCMP and other government agencies. The current common complaint from most of these teams is they simply don’t have the time and the right equipment they need to do the sweep. I hope therefore, that the following discussion will enlighten and encourage the reader to conduct Tactical Sweeps that:

• Provide complete spectrum coverage of the threat
• Locate the threat
• Are efficient and effective
• Are cognizant of limited ‘time on target’
• Offer solutions to situations where lasting protection is required

In a tactical situation, the order of priority will be to investigate:

1. RF Spectrum near field detection and location
2. Audio (mic and wire)
3. Physical – NLJD
4. Physical (environment)

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 "Specialized Intelligence and Privacy Protection"

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© 2012 - Waypoint Counter Surveillance