What would you tell a voting-precinct sized ‘group’ of non-professionals to do re intel? a reader sends:
An outstanding question. Deserves rumination for the weekend so I can put into words you deserve as a response. The “execution” piece is part art but I will give some thought against my microcosm. Am probably blessed at this end not to have the machinations of the big city, hives being repulsive to me (with 1 “district” here being the entire small town of several wards) . Have been positioned in big-cities in places around the globe & am a native SoCal ex-pat, though, so it’s a personal choice after seeing both. I’d rather be sitting on the beach playing my Stratocaster. (See how easily people blab?, lol) I think your idea to focus small is on track. For all the counsel heard from the rooftops to “move away” the reality is that people live where they live for a variety of reasons. However, the district-sized morsel is something replicable pretty much across the board; the terrain is just different. So I’ll reflect on this over the weekend. ————————————-
BLUF: People need to get off their ass for 30 minutes a day or even a couple hours/week & do some simple shit.
This’ll be somewhat disjointed as I’m hitting it over the course of a couple days. Some of what I personally think would be likely responded to by some with scorn since it will necessarily involve interacting with people in establishment circles, including currently elected officials (although recently un-elected ones can be good sources). I don’t know, or know how to teach, craft at the level Culper can impart but think it’s important that people be willing to interact with those socially around them, in their immediate area. If they can’t do that, they’re really only going to ultimately get the picture that an enemy wants seen. I hope it’s worth the time it takes you to read it.
People Stuff:
At the precinct level (don’t know what that is in a big metropolis in terms of population), I’d suggest that folks should identify those that are in positions to exercise influence in their lives. As just one example, it is surprising how many don’t know who actually makes determinations about utilities, permit processes, etc. This kind of information is so easily collectible that it’s almost criminal not to; it’s OSINT (just visit city hall) & it should be as specifically important as having a local phone book in the drawer near the phone. This is boring shit but it’s necessary so that, later, when a name comes up at an opportunity to meet with someone who might provide info you’ll know who you’re talking to and “how important they are” in terms of what they do, which can include knowing someone else of interest they can “turn you on” to. ;) It’s important to remember that you DON’T want all these seeming functionaries to hang – you’ll need them to fix the signal at the RR tracks, or turn lights on, or service the generator for the water treatment plant. History shows us this many times.
One opportunity to meet people who hear things is to engage with the local Chamber of Commerce and find out if they have any “meet & greet” type events with local business people. Again, these opportunities to get facetime with people who hear shit can be invaluable. In most locales (IME) it’s a relative few who are the movers & shakers in a place. Doesn’t require a lot of effort but is valuable later for getting little pieces and./or cross-checking something later. Even if you couldn’t attend, “say, what d’ya hear about the maintenance costs on Podunk county’s new MRAP? My sister’s son-in-law said those things are really expensive… I don’t think I’ve even seen it in the parade last 4th of July, does it run?” Or (to a city planner) “hey, I read about all the state funds getting cut (you do peruse the most local rag, right?) do we have a backup if our wastewater treatment plant goes down?” People love to display how much they know; let them. Not talking about schmoozing here; but (something hard for me to understand for awhile) one has to sometimes go back to a simple child-like curiosity about stuff when engaging people about what they do.
Something else that can be done, which has been beaten to death, is patterning those in the local community who live their lives on the radio. Here’s a real example, going on now:
The local PD (which as I mentioned anecdotally before to you are happily in the category of Peace Officers in this neck of the woods, evidenced by how they comport themselves) is in a pretty big hurt resource-wise. Why? My guess (important distinction) is the rash of seemingly random shootings of officers around the country. Why do I think that? Because VERY recently they have been responding to the most mundane, the most routine calls, with 2 cars or, if not, 1 who often waits for the second one to clear from another call and then it’s 2 on scene before they really begin dealing with anything that might involve more than 1 subject. How do I know that? Because I ALREADY know their battle-rhythm. They are either under some threat guidance, or have unilaterally decided to start taking additional back-watching precautions. Now, truly, that information or assumption by me does NOT intelligence make. But I know most of these folks and the first innocuous chance I get in contact with one of them, I’m going to commiserate with them about it and ask them if that’s why they seem to be doing that (and of course bemoan the situation, etc. etc…..). Then I might have something more solid. (But I’ve got a real good hunch about this one.)
Separate RFI, it would be interesting to know if others who’ve actually patterned their gendarmes are noticing the same thing.
Such a thing is a huge resource hog. It’s also a vulnerability. That is, it just got twice as easy in terms of what it takes to create a diversion to get a large subset of the shift on duty away from some other location that might be of interest.
Takes too long to suddenly double the number of officers, even if the money was there (it ain’t). And doubling up in the cars accomplishes nothing in terms of patrol coverage. This kind of stuff is where the patterning pays off.
Another task that sort of falls into intel gathering relates directly to training, where the collection may let you enjoy an opportunity, particularly if you’re a city-dweller and don’t have access to rural land. Go to the nearest Register of Deeds office in your county and fork over the money for a plat book. Why? First, in doing your drive-arounds (see below) it can be useful simply as “who owns what.” It’s also useful to see where private land adjoins land for other uses. It can also be useful if trying to find just who to contact to maybe ask permission, not to hunt, but simply to gain access to the back 40 from a gravel road and, say, run a compass course.
Ya never know unless you ask. OSINT.
Infrastructure Stuff:
If one is in a semi-rural area, where are the wells that serve the little cities & towns? I don’t mean “1 on the eastern part of the city, 1 up on the north end” – I mean, specifically, to an 8-digit coordinate or fire-number on a country road, where are they? I got a map of all of my town’s simply from interest in an article in the paper about the EPA returning one set of a well’s testing results as bad & they had to take the well off line, which yielded new article in the local rag – and then contacting the nice lady in the city utilities department. Again, OSINT, but I had to ask, it’s not on the billboards. Then go for a drive. “Hmmm, where does this road go?” Path not previously taken stuff.
I wonder how many people any more still simply take a drive around their local area for a few hours to get ground truth of what’s up with streets, major routes, where bottle-necks are, what are 2nd thru 5th order ways to get from point A to B? Every whitetail knows their 2-5 square miles like fingerprints; people need to learn their “woods” even if it’s mostly concrete & glass. All the above can be accomplished while still remaining gray. Simply having interest in something falls solidly between the hermit and the PITA that shows up at every city council committe meeting to heckle someone. That’s who gets remembered, not the citizen who’s simply interested.
Speaking of taking a drive, that includes night-time. Can’t sleep? Get a cup of coffee and take a middle of the night roam through the nearest big truck-stop. Take note of what’s being line-hauled. Caution because I say take note of… not freak out over. Line-hauling of military vehicles to/from Reserve/Guard units, bases for 2-week training, and maintenance shops by private truckers using low-boys is ROUTINE. But take note over time of what’s the normal throughput of the nearest 18-wheeler “O’Hare” in your AO. The other good time to note this traffic is dawn, and whenever the evening sun dip occurs, when it’s only about 5-10° above the horizon. It’s in people’s eyes & they use that time to take a break.
Are your local cop-shop or other administrative nets running off a repeater? Where is it? Can’t find it? Sure you can; it’s in the FCC ULS database, same place as your license info, just a different subset of info, along with all the freqs they have allocated. But then you knew that because that’s how you loaded your scanner. Even Google will take you to that info; like the old Nike slogan, just do it.
Sorry to be long-winded but trying to think of examples to support the “why do this stuff” aspect. Is drinking water availability important? Are the comms on VHF? If so, then simplex is gonna suck, guys, if/when your repeater goes down for some reason. (And the repeater is probably just off on a hilltop somewhere with some dog-pound-like chain link around it on a tiny-fee lease agreement with some farmer or the “Guv” did a “taking” of 300 sq feet off the gravel road for the access.)
I think from previous readings Culper has given the breadcrumbs out and probably some steak & eggs as well, probably several times, as to specific targets that deserve one’s local attention- don’t have a sense as to how people are acting on that good info. But one of the reasons people should think locallocallocal is that the stuff you want to know is so available. But it requires a little bit of a) initiative and b) willingness to engage with other humans who they may lump together as embodying some type of evil they comment about on the internet. This stuff could be so easily tasked out to individual members of a group of like-minded friends. And, in the doing of that, confidence is gained both in method (“jeez, I could’ve got this a lot easier” or “I should’ve gotten this too…” or “hey, that’s a gem, good job.”) and a shared sense of accomplishment and that may lead to more in-depth efforts. Nothing succeeds like success kinda thing.
Does Amtrak stop in your area? When/how often? How long are they usually stopped (tying up traffic)? What are alternate paths to cross to continue your travel if you simply cannot tolerate being static for some reason? What’s the general battle-rhythm of freight trains that do the same thing; and in which direction? Sometimes the comments I see lead me to believe many simply don’t bother to observe because they are hand-wringing over the latest Mother Jones article; in a residential area they probably haven’t patterned a radius of 6 houses around their own.
So there’s no excuse not to interact with humans where there’s a valid need that can be fulfilled. I think far too many (probably some who’ve never worked for any form of government) assume that anyone who works (or worked) for any level of government anywhere, for any reason, is evil, at least suspect, and needs to be hung. Man, I promise you they need to revise their thinking ’cause they’ll be busy obsessing about that instead of figuring out ways to feed their family or noticing stuff that’s important before it achieves critical mass. It is not full-on Stasi yet and, yes, I DO know the difference. None of this stuff requires a ton of manhours especially if divided into small chunks.
And if all people are doing is grousing like an 8-yr old and obsessing about stuff & not having any fun in their lives, then OPFOR has already completely won.
————————————- Old intel isn’t intel:
One anecdote as to the importance of keeping it simple & achievable, but refreshed.
Once upon a time there was a signal company (variety of capabilities) that deployed to a mountain environment in support of a Corps CG (3-star). The Bn Sig officer had the perfect OPLAN, already on the shelf for years, for just what everyone should load out with, down to the numbers of mast sections for the platoon that provided the critical UHF links for the fancy-shit “and we will by-God stick to the plan.”
Only problem was no one had done an environmental recon of the site in several years & forgot to ask the trees not to grow. Not enough mast to get the UHF horns up to LoS capability; no comms for first 48 hrs except for us HF CW folks (read “heroes of the day”, lol). But only because it was an exercise; in real life it would’ve been death as the CG could never have exercised the C2 he needed.
So it pays to not just take a snapshot. Better to do something simple & keep doing it.
Daily PT in the 60’s in basic wasn’t actually all that long in duration, but after 8 weeks it certainly had a positive effect.
Poster Comment:
I don't freak out every time somebody posts pictures of tanks/Humvee's/etc. moving by railroad or flatbeds. Also, working out 4-6 times a week has a cumulative effect. You don't have to even put in one hour at a time, just compress your activity into a solid workout. Park your car at the end of the lot, you need the exercise (and you'll get fewer door dings!). Take the stairs when possible, etc. It all adds up over time.