Corruption of LOL

Even I am guilty of buying into this but, hey, better safe than sorry.

Last night (18March2009) there was an elaborate rumor/hoax that spread across the nation, widely via text message, that there were going to be “gang initiation shootings” at Wal-Marts across the nation.

There were many variations of the hoax nationwide–the one that concerned me was out of Tucson, Arizona and threatened that the gangs were going to murder three women at local Wal-Marts that night.

But, alas, the scare was largely a hoax, with no real threat behind it. See the LA Times story here.

However, it is very important to realize that once a threat like this has been so widely publicized, it is a very real possibility that there will be “copycat criminals” who will get ideas from the threat and, in the worst of scenarios, carry them out themselves.

Remember the Columbine school shootings? And the huge number of similar shootings in the following weeks?

If you’re a Wal-Mart shopper, don’t stop shopping there–that’s being ridiculous–but keep your eyes open and maintain your situational awareness. Wal-Mart may not be as safe as it used to be.

Seems like it’s time for another article. Don’t worry though, this one is short and sweet.

As you’re reading, keep in mind, some parts of this technique should be used by everyone, while others may not be applicable to you in particular (e.g. guys named Bruce who live at Gold’s Gym). Adopt what you think will help you stay safe. Of course, take your gender, strength, and overall physical competence into account when deciding which of these techniques to adopt.

Background

Many people do the same thing over and over again on a daily, weekly, or other repetitive basis. This kind of behavior is what humans naturally resort to, and the bad guys know this. The best criminals (and even some dimwits for that matter) know that surveillance is key if they want to pull something off. They want to know what to expect and when to expect it.

What they are trying to do is eliminate any intentional or unintentional element of surprise that their prey might have over them.

If you incorporate easy and appropriate counter-surveillance techniques into your daily schedule, you are likely to either stay off the bad guys’ radar completely, or at least give yourself a leg up if something does happen.

One particular time when people are very vulnerable is when they are walking to or from their vehicles.

Approaching/departing your vehicle (mostly applicable at night time)

• Try not to use the same route to and from your vehicle – walk up one row when you are leaving your car; walk back down another row and cut over on your way back.
• When parking at your residence, use a private, locked garage if at all possible. If you do not have a garage, make sure you have motion-sensing flood lights that activate upon your arrival.
• If you live and park in an apartment complex, try not to always park in the same spot. Switch it up randomly, even if you have to walk further. (Use your judgement here.)
• If you have an assigned parking space, do not always drive straight to it, especially at night. Circle the complex and come back from the other direction, or pull into someone else’s spot, then back up and pull into yours.
• Always maintain a high level of situational awareness when entering or departing your vehicle.
• Do not display your keys for very long before or after you enter the vehicle. If at all possible, lock and unlock your vehicle with your keys still in your pocket.
• If you ever return to your car and find that you forgot to lock it, make sure it is unoccupied. If it is daylight, simply look inside. If it is night time, press your “panic” button (or activate approach lights if your car has them) prior to approaching the car. This will frighten and confuse anyone in the car, as well as draw attention from others nearby.

Driving your vehicle

• Become very familiar with your vehicle – know how it acts and handles at various speeds. Consider taking classes on advanced driving techniques. BE CAREFUL. Knowing your limitations and the limitations of your vehicle prior to practicing is very important. You are NOT a stunt driver. Don’t act like one.
• In city driving, keep your doors locked. This prevents entry into your vehicle while it is still.
• In highway driving, keep your doors unlocked. No one will enter your car while you are going 75. This will make it easier for rescuers to reach you should you be involved in an accident.
• Women only: at night and/or in isolated areas, do NOT stop if you are being pursued by a police car. Call 911 on your cell phone and ask the dispatcher if the car behind you is really a police officer. If you do not have a cell phone, drive (obeying all traffic laws, of course) to the nearest police station or well-lit public area and pull over. If on the highway, pull to the side of the road and continue at a slow (but not dangerously slow) rate of speed until you have confirmed that you are being pursued by a real police officer.
• Men, apply the technique above only in very special circumstances.
• Remember cars in your immediate area while driving.
• If you have reason to believe you are being followed, circle a block, drive to a police station, or call 911. Under no circumstances do you drive to your home or any other place that you frequent.
• If you are involved in a minor car accident, call the police immediately and drive to a public, well-lit area to pull over.
• If you are involved in a major accident (meaning that your car will no longer operate), make sure you are in a well-lit, public area before exiting your vehicle. If you are not in such an area, remain in your car with the doors locked until authorities arrive.

Thanks for reading! Questions or comments, post them here or email or call me.

Until next time, Semper Fi, folks.

Twenty-four hours a day. Making the commitment.

If you’ve made the conscious decision that you need to adopt new habits and attitudes to increase your personal security, then you have probably come to the realization that this is not something that you do. This is something you live. It is a lifestyle.

Don’t let this scare you off. Taking charge of your personal security is essentially no different from any other lifestyle choice you make. You will learn new techniques, and practice them until they become a part of your unconscious. Think of it as training yourself. Any kind of training teaches you new skills, and when you need to use these skills, they kick in automatically–self-protection is no different. Commit now, train yourself, and benefit for a lifetime.

The basics

The foundation of self-protection consists of a mixture or self-awareness and situational awareness. In order for you to become effective at protecting yourself from any given threat on a daily basis, it is of utmost importance (obviously) that you identify the threat prior to the point in which in becomes an immediate issue for you.

In many circumstances, simply identifying and realizing a potential threat before it becomes a real and manifested problem can prevent it from becoming an issue in the first place.

Take, for example, pickpockets. Pickpockets take advantage or people who are 1) distracted, and 2) unaware of themselves and their surroundings. Someone who maintains situational awareness will take note of everybody within a certain proximity to him as well as know who he will come into close contact with within the next few seconds.

What to look for – SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Face and body language is first and foremost. While it is true that not all serial killers look like serial killers, there is a significant amount of information that humans derive automatically and subconsciously from facial expressions and body language. Some people are born with a better sense of this than others. If you feel you are lacking, consider some of the many books regarding reading a person’s body language. Trust me–this isn’t psychopathic, telepathy bullshit, this is science!

It comes less naturally to people, but something that can be very useful if learned and committed to the unconscious–immediately when you see someone, first, look at their face, and immediately after, look at their hands. Position of the hands is extremely important, along with body language, to determine someone’s intentions. For example, a face looking down and two hands on a cell phone while a person is walking indicates that that person is likely of little threat–their attention is off you, they are distracted, and their hands are both occupied with a harmless object. On the other hand, if a person’s eyes are shifty, and switching on and off of you, and their hands are in their pockets, this is cause to pay that person additional attention. Maintaining as much distance as possible without becoming overly obvious would make sense–turning around and losing visual contact would not be a good idea. When you identify a potential threat, stick with it. If that threat is realized and you are in imminent danger, then breaking contact may be advisable. That is a separate topic, however (bookmark us, we’ll get there).

I can’t explain every aspect of this to you– past a certain point, situational awareness is common sense. Keep track of your surroundings. If something/someone looks dangerous, pay them/it additional attention.

Stay lucid – SELF-AWARENESS

Sounds clear-cut, right? Sort of.

Self-awareness may be one of the hardest things to master. Most people are often distracted with their surroundings, internal stress or emotions, or any number of things, and tend to ignore their own bodies. Of course, if you are injured or experience some kind of definite physical contact, you will notice, however, if your wallet or cell phone is removed by a pickpocket, how long will it take you to notice? Right now, it is possible that you have something in your pocket. Until I mentioned it, it was probably not of concern to you–you can feel it pressing against your leg now that I have reminded you of it, but prior to that, you were likely too distracted by your reading to think about the item in your pocket.

This is very normal–you can’t always be thinking about everything at the same time, but it is something that you need to learn to do in certain circumstances. For example, if your situational awareness indicates to you that someone is a potential threat, and somehow you are unable to avoid that person, it is a good idea to immediately perform what I have come to call a “body check.” Simply check in with your body–is your wallet still there, your phone? Make sure everything is still as it should be.

Avoiding a problem is easier than solving a problem.

Keep in mind the ideas that I have explained, and think about and elaborate on them yourself. This really isn’t rocket science, it’s just something that requires thinking. This article was not intended to tell you how to protect yourself in the event that you find trouble, but rather to give you the tools required to avoid the trouble in the first place.

You don’t need to know how to fight if you make sure you never get in a fight.

Granted, it’s not always up to you, and we’ll cover techniques for those situations in the future.

If you’re lazy and don’t want to read it all, here’s the rundown:

1. Buy a used GSM phone from a private seller WITHOUT an activated SIM card and WITHOUT GPS. (Recommendation: Nokia 1600)
2. Buy a pre-paid SIM card for a carrier that does not require personal information. Buy it from a private seller if it must be shipped to you. If you buy it in person, pay cash–this will eliminate any possible ties back to you through the credit card receipt. (Recommendation: Net10’s lowest cost card available)
3. Activate the SIM card using a pay phone or other anonymous phone (again, to eliminate any potential ties to you). If using Net10, you should not have to provide personal information. If your specific carrier requires personal information, choose another carrier. Providing false information can be illegal and I do not in any way suggest or endorse the idea.
4. Use the phone as infrequently as possible, and only for calls which you think are of confidential nature. Dial *67XXXXXXXXXX (X’s indicated the desired destination number) to mask your number from the caller ID of the recipient–this will help to keep the fact that this number belongs to you a secret.
5. When you run out of minutes or time on your pre-paid card, do not renew it. Throw it away and buy a brand new card with a brand new number. Not keeping any one number for very long keeps potential eavesdroppers from catching up to you.
6. Do not give away your phone number. Use the phone for outgoing calls only.

Now for the meat and potatoes; well you’re reading it, aren’t you?

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I promise. If you are…. well, first of all, God help you; secondly, you might still find this post interesting, but I wouldn’t bookmark me–you are probably better suited fulfilling your secret-agent fantasies elsewhere.

First off, I feel the need to explain myself for writing this. I know you’re saying to yourself, “I’m a practical person reading a blog meant for practical people, and some guy is trying to tell me I need an untraceable cell phone?!” Crazy sounding, I understand, but practical nonetheless.

Eavesdroppers don’t have to have targets.

Cell phones have weaknesses. They can be easy to trace, locate, and even tap/bug/intercept given that there is someone out there with the desire to do so. To borrow a military term, “high value targets” for this can include the likes of corporate executives, government officials, and so on. And, even if you don’t think that you are likely to be an intended target, there is still the possibility of becoming an unintended or chance victim, possibly leading to identity theft or worse.

My phone is military-spec, it’s not weak!

Your phone may be able to withstand a bullet or a ten foot drop, but this is the 21st century–weakness more often refers to holes in firewalls and 8-bit encryption more often than it does to lack of physical durability or strength. There are numerous ways for your phone to become compromised or for it to compromise you:

• Unencrypted signal
• Cell phone cloning
• (Un)authorized pinging
• Recorded call history

The most dangerous element of cell phone insecurity is the fact that many carriers and their associated phones do not encrypt voice signals or data transfer, leaving them open to close-range hackers. Listening to a cell phone signal is illegal, but not difficult with the right equipment. Before cell phones were prominent, the frequencies that they utilize were not federally restricted and it was perfectly legal for the public to tune in to these frequencies. Today, widely available radio frequency scanners have been manufactured in such a way that monitoring certain signals (from cell phones, cordless phones, etc) is not possible. This means that all a hacker needs to do is find himself a frequency scanner from the pre-cell phone era, and he can just as easily listen to you on your cell phone just as easily as he can the local fire department.

“For goodness sakes, Jim, make a decision!”

You are going to need to make a choice. Only GSM phones are unencrypted. (T-Mobile, AT&T (Cingular), and basically any phone with a “SIM card” are GSM-based.) CDMA phones (Sprint, Verizon, etc.), on the other hand, change channels so often and in such a way that makes them virtually impossible to listen-in to continuously. Sometimes carriers even offer additional levels of encryption sometimes referred to as “voice privacy.”

Sounds simple, right? Just trash your T-Mobile and go get a Sprint phone. SLOW DOWN, cowboy. Yes, CDMA phones are more secure in this way, but you can also sacrifice a lot of security with a CDMA phone. Read on.

Having a truly untraceable cell phone does, of course, require that your service provider be completely ignorant as to your identity. This means that you must not enter a contract (unless you yourself are an identity thief) as this would associate your name, address, credit card number, etc. with your phone number. Do this, and you lose anonymity, which is a paramount concept to an untraceable cell phone.

The solution, you must narrow down your options to pre-paid service providers.

Remember the choice I told you that you were going to have to make? Well, here it is: with a regular CDMA phone, you will have voice privacy in your immediate area. CDMA phones will prevent your neighbors or close-followers from hearing your calls and intercepting your text messages and any other data transfers. All you need for this is a regular run-of-the-mill cell phone from a CDMA carrier. The drawbacks? The phone number is associated with your name. Authorities can listen to your calls with a warrant (hopefully this is not of concern for you), information related to call history and cell phone usage can be subpoenaed, and you will generally leave a trail with use of the phone.

If you value secrecy of contacts, protection from overzealous ex-’s, or whatever (again, I’m not judging) and in my opinion, a more “untraceable” cell phone, then a (fairly specific) pre-paid GSM phone is what you need.

But, if you want to be as secure as possible, we must be specific:

Most of today’s phones are GPS-enabled and vulnerable to pinging (carrier sending out a signal that prompts your phone to return it’s coordinates to the carrier). Get a phone without GPS.

• My recommendation: Nokia 1600 (This phone tends to be cheap as well, so if you are so inclined as to pull a Jason Bourne and throw the phone in a public trash can instead of hanging up, you are welcome to.)

Your carrier will need to be okay with providing service sans personal identification.

• My recommendation: Net10

Don’t ever let your phone number become known.

• Take note that the *67 trick works nicely against civilian caller IDs. Don’t expect it to keep your number secret in all situations.

Alternate solutions to an untraceable cell phone:

• Get a secure cell phone.
• Live in a cave.
• Don’t call people.
• Come to the realization that you really probably don’t need one. (But it’s still fun!)
• Be a teenage girl and prompt your eavesdropper to commit suicide by never shutting up (sorry, teenage girls, nothing personal). But seriously. This is probably the most effective way. Stay tuned for an article about being a teenage girl.

Criminals are SO last year! Like O-M-G, totally!! (Sorry, I got carried away.)

I take no responsibility for misuse of this information. The intention of this blog is to assist people in self-protection. Unfortunately, overlap between self-protection and criminal activity do exist. If you are plotting nefarious activities, have fun going to jail–the police are smarter than you. Do not ask me how to commit crimes. I will fuck you up.