It has been a long day, I am tired, and hopefully this does not ramble on
for too long, but this may answer some of your questions.
Everybody enters the TSCM business from a little bit different point, and
each person finds a comfort level into which they make a living (or
become destitute). Some develop a passion early in their careers, other
find this as a passion later, and some never become passionate at all. A
person may lean towards criminal conduct, or may be as honest as anybody
can be. Some people choose it as a career path, and other develop it
merely as an additional skill but do not become particularly good at it.
Some government people perform extraordinarily well while in government
employment, but fall flat on their face as soon as they start working in
the private sector. Some people do really good work while working for a
large company, but can not survive on their own without living in their
mother’s basement and running their TSCM empire from a folding card table
with purloined equipment. Some people are great with developing
equipment, and doing the sweeps, but do not make much at doing either so
they leave the business.
Pretty much anybody who is successful in this business is more then
willing to help out someone with advice who genuinely wants to get into
the business, and will be more then happy to guide them into the right
direction because quite frankly there is way more demand for sweep
business out there then there are TSCM firms who can perform legitimate
sweeps. By "legitimate sweep" I means that the consumer of the
sweep or "customer" actually gets more then they are paying
for, major problems are discovered and leaks are prevented well before
the customer is" waist deep in water and alligators"
The key to success in this business is to first develop a strong non-TSCM
background, build up your equipment for that non-TSCM background, pack
several hundred college credits under your belt, then work a few years in
either government or private sector, and only after that start to study
TSCM and S-L-O-W-L-Y start acquiring TSCM gear. Do not get into the
business thinking that you are going to make a fast buck, and always,
always, always have an exit strategy worked out well in advance so that
you can leave the business at anytime should either your business skills
not equal your technical skills, or you find that TSCM has lost the
challenge that it once held.
Every year a scores of people lay out tens of thousand or even hundreds
of thousands of dollars each to purchase a collection of TSCM equipment
thinking that they have found a cash cow that they can milk for the rest
of their lives (usually in their retirement years). Then 2-3 years later,
many of them have a fire-sale at a significant loss, or in some cases
they be able to squeak out enough of a living to survive 5 or even 10
years (but usually not under the same business name).
---
The TSCM is stratified into several distinct groups,
1) New Person, Some interest in TSCM from an academic or personal level.
Wants to learn or read about TSCM because they may have considered having
a sweep performed in the past, or that they are considering one in the
future. Also included technical or technical security people who have a
professional interest in TSCM as it may plug into their job somehow at
some point, but who are not actually interested in performing sweeps.
Desperately need guidance on what may be a very lucrative career
(someday), but for now they are keeping their nose in the textbooks,
attending every technical class they can handle, and may even be
attending multiple college at the same time just because they can soak up
the teaching faster then they can get it at any one single
college.
2) Someone with a professional interest in sweep, and who may need sweeps
on a regular basis and who studies sweep so as to be a well educated
consumer or facilitator of a sweep, but not somebody who either owns
sweep gear, nor someone whom does sweeps for pay.
3) A student who has started to study TSCM, and who may or may not have
equipment, but if they do have equipment it is most likely that
dollar-for-dollar they have more general purpose test equipment is
relationship to their TSCM equipment. May not own a spectrum analyzer,
but does own a DVM, Scope, and several suitcases or briefcases of general
purpose test equipment and tools. This would most commonly be a typical
college engineering student, or college graduate who has a small
workshop, but is not providing sweep services, or building their own
gear. While they may be able to build their own gear from scratch, and
may explore the methods and procedures they are not interested in TSCM as
anything more then an academic or personal exercise.
4) Amateur radio junkies, who get to play with radios and electronics at
the hobbyist level, but who do have enough of a technical background to
get a full-time job working with, building, or designing electronics.
Primary interest tends to be to enhance their ham radio skills, seriously
polish up their fox hunt skills, and often have an interest in TSCM from
an academic perspective in that want to learn TSCM as it involves a lot
of radio stuff, but they really are not trying to be involved in the TSCM
business at the professional level. Mind you that if somebody is a
really, really good "Fox" hunter that they (with primitive and
often self built equipment) are often light years ahead of a private
investigators and consultants (with a couple of fancy looking
blinkie-boxes)
5) Next are amateur radio folks who can "Fake Good" during a
bug sweep, and can do what they think is effective, and who may, or may
not be honest (most are honest by the way). Their interest in TSCM is to
convert their hobby which involved a lot of toys, radios, and test
equipment into some kind of commercial enterprise. Very often the
majority of their equipment is surplus gear they bought used via a
variety of channels, but a few of them to make their own gear from
scratch in order to save money. Usually if they have a spectrum analyzer
or Oscilloscope it is one they bought used (often via E-Bay), and which
is at least ten years beyond the date of the time the instrument was
built. Sadly, most of these folks are doomed to failure if they try to
get into the TSCM business.
6) A more advanced version of the typical ham radio person, but usually
someone who does work in technology in some fashion, and while it may not
be a hardware based job, they do have a professional four+ year degree in
electronics, computer science, or some sort of engineering or area of
scientific knowledge. May not have attended specifically TSCM focused
training, but they can run an oscilloscope or spectrum analyzer in their
sleep, can run up a radio from memory, and while they may not be able to
design a circuit board they can solder components does cleanly and follow
instructions. This used to be called the "Heathkit Sweepers,” and
they often have a little ham shack or workshop where they can build
circuits, but the majority of their money is spent in pursuing their
"hobby" and not developing a professional skill. This is
sometimes described as a "Hobby with Benefits", and quite
frequently they are a pretty good success in TSCM and can have a good
"run", and can even use TSCM as a fall-back skill-set should
they need an alternate job skill.
7) Then there are what are called "Amateur Hybrids", who
usually lack a strong technical education, but have learned quite a bit
though their involvement with the amateur radio community, or their
contact with private investigators, or other technical groups and who are
able to talk about sweeps but who do not actually know how to do them,
They sort of float around the middle of the food chain and try to impress
other ham radio guys about their elite skills, and try to convince
private investigators to let them do sweeps by virtue of having a ham
radio licenses. Sometimes that can "fake good,” but more often then
not they "fake bad.” It is rare for them to have any sweep gear, but
if they do it is usually a very old model but which they lack formal
training on. They often are referred to a "Urinators,” and they can
talk a mean streak about things they have heard about (but not actually
done themselves), but don't really have the slightest idea what they are
doing. The "Urinators" moniker comes from the fact that at
first glance appear to know what they are doing, and look all honest and
stuff on the surface, but they prey on everybody around them, and are not
what they appear to be, the moniker is further derived from the small
cake that is in the bottom of the urinal in the men's room that covers up
a bad odor, and which you do not want to touch (no, despite what some
fools think... the urinal cake is not a breath mint)
8) Ah, there is yet another more interesting variant to be observed and
it is someone who lacks a technical back, lacks a technical background,
and who is frequently involved in some kind of illicit activity and for
whom paranoia is part of their daily life. They will often go out and
purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of sweep gear and other
technical items in an attempt to protect their grow houses, meth labs,
brothels, or loan sharking operations, or to protect their illicit
activities from either other people in their same line of work or from
government agencies (black helicopters, SWAT teams, etc). They tend not
to be law abiding citizens, and tend no to be contributing to the well
being of anybody but themselves.
8) Next, we get into an interesting group where people are just starting
into the study of TSCM at the professional basis, and who are laying out
a long term plan to study the basics, gain an understanding of
electronics, to gain technical skills related to TSCM in a technical
field where they work with a range of test equipment and tools, and who
is slowly building up a new (or gently used) inventory of test equipment
they plan of still being able to use when that start doing sweeps at some
future day, way, way down the road. They may of may not have a TSCM
mentor who is guiding them down the path, and they may or may not be
involved in amateur radio activities. Does not plan to provide sweep
services to customers until such time as they: a) complete their basic
technical training and get job experience in a technical field, b) Then
acquire enough test equipment to set up their own shop or lab, c) Gain
actual TSCM experience through a combination of attending formal TSCM
training and working as a TSCM apprentice with other team, and then d) to
slowly purchase a basic low level set of TSCM equipment on which they
already have been trained. The key is that that "know that which
they do not know" and have a plan in place to gain the knowledge,
equipment, and practice to start their own sweep operation. This is
actually where most TSCM folks who survive the business long term
begin.
9) OK, not to pick on PI's or anything, but... Private Investigators have
no business performing sweeps... Yeah, I know that I sound like a broken
record, but you would be amazed at how many PI's find bugs on every sweep
they do (throw-downs), but can not tell you the frequency the bug is
operating on, and who will point to a dimmer switch and claim that it is
bugged because their diode detector system says that their is something
in their that is making their $800 bug detector "chirp" and
make the other machine go "ping". While some of these folks may
be honest, and their efforts may be good intentioned, but there are many
more who are just performing a dog-and-pony show for the customers and
are charlatans (and they know they are charlatans). Private investigators
are good at general investigative methods, and they can be invaluable in
coordinating a sweep, providing security during a sweep, compiling site
documents for a sweep, and even in providing distractions to the
eavesdropper so that the sweep folks can slip in undetected, and at no
time should they ever attempt to perform the sweep itself. Note that if
you are a PI you can make a huge amount on money in regards to providing
sweeps or sweep related services, and you will not have to spend even a
single penny on equipment or TSCM training (see some of my prior
rants).
10) This next type of person is someone "who is on the path" to
becoming a professional TSCM person. They usually have a horde of test
equipment that is not related to performing sweeps and a modest pile of
equipment for actually performing sweeps, but not quite enough equipment
to do a sweep by themselves. For example, they may have all kinds of
TDR's, scopes, meters, tone generators, and maybe a single older model of
spectrum analyzer, but they know enough about sweep to know not to try to
perform sweeps by themselves. They recognize that they are still
learning, and very often they are still working as an apprentice sweeper,
or still working with a mentor how is helping to shepherd them on the
path of becoming a "self sufficient" sweeper, but they are not
quite there yet.
11) Government sweepers fit into a level of the profession in that they
may or may not have the skills (most can turn knobs, but not do much
else), and only get to play with the equipment which their employer (the
Government) provides for them. They are a little bit further "down
the path" in TSCM as their newly started brethren once in the
private practice world, but since the usually lack equipment which they
(legally) possess on their own it is unlikely that they will be able to
provide TSCM services once they leave government service. Occasionally, a
couple of them will pop up in the private sector but they usually end up
working for a large government contract after they find it impossible to
perform private sector sweeps with uncle sugars equipment. Sometime a
.gov sweeper will show up on the horizon loaded up with equipment, but
can not explain how he came to acquire the gear, and after a few awkward
questions he decided to make a quite exit (i.e. it is amazing how much
equipment government employee can steal and still get away with it). Mind
you there are quite a few ex-government sweepers out there who are quite
honest, but most of them can not function out on their own as they do not
have a quarter million dollars to spend on sweep gear when they retire
from active government service, thus you have to ask question about WHERE
they got all of their fancy boxes that are curiously missing serial
numbers. As most of these folks tend to wander into the private sector,
fall flat on their face, and then to work for a government contractor 3
to 5 years after their crashing and burning they can usually be found
about 2 years out from their retirement dusting off their resume and
begging recruiters to help them find a job.
12) A really, really shrewd government employee will slowly build of
their equipment (out of their own pocket) over the decades they serve the
government, and slowly build up their savings account, and towards the
last fourth of their government career they will put a lot of energy into
networking (hint: court the executive recruiters five years away from
retirement) so that they/you have a customer base lined up well in
advance of entering the private circles, and with equipment that actually
belongs to the person doing the sweep and not the previous employer. When
possible they will go from government service (of say 15-20-25+) years,
and then go to work for a large government contractor, all the while
investing in their own hardware, and building up their network of
contacts. Then after settling into a contractor’s position they are in a
much better situation to fully go out on their own and perform sweeps all
by themselves.
13) Owning your own business is like doing trapeze work without using a
net. It is one thing to be working for someone else, using their
equipment, cashing their payroll check, letting them pay for all the
equipment, and letting them take all the risk. With this in
consideration, you are going to have to have way more then a stack of
certificates, and a bunch of shiny new equipment to function in the TSCM
business. Many people are really good sweepers, but not very smart
business operators, and some of the really astute business people can not
perform a legitimate sweep to save their own lives. Thus the vast
majority of people who perform sweeps actually work for somebody else,
and that somebody else takes all the risk out of their lives. Early in
their career a TSCM person will decide what part of the equation they
intend to work towards as their ultimate goal, and they will have a plan
that they stick to and which they improve upon each year.
14) One type of employee does nothing but sweeps and sweep related work
and spend their hours loading and unloading equipment, scampering up
ladders, twirling knobs, tracing wires, and trying to ferret out tiny
fluctuations in the noise floor. They tend to not interface with the
client very much, but rather lets their employer handle setting up the
sweeps, for which they provide the technical talent, and very often bring
their own equipment to the sweep (which they personally own), and which
may not belong to the person who employs them. This is actually a pretty
sweet position to be in as the risk is absolutely minimal for the person
doing the sweep but the person for whom they are working has to absorb
all of the expenses (including paying the wages when work gets
slow).
15) Another type of situation is for the entrepreneur who finds one or
two technical people, or maybe even actual TSCM people who have both a
technical background and equipment, but who lack the Rolodex full of
local attorneys, millionaires, and affluent customers willing to pay for
a proper sweep. The down side is that the sweep business is fickle and
requires a full time attention to detail, and a full time, long term
presence to survive... and quite frankly most people are not cut out for
it. Sadly, most sweep businesses last no more then 3 years, and many are
luck to make it past the first 24 months. A rare few actually make it to
the 60th month in business, and once they reach that point they can
usually sustain their business so long as they have a strong technical
background, decent test equipment (separate from sweep gear), good sweep
gear (separate from general purpose test equipment), enough money in the
bank to float the company through the dry seasons that occur each year,
and enough intestinal fortitude to survive what can be an interesting
voyage.
16) Some TSCM operations survive by doing something in addition to TSCM
to smooth out the slow period in their sweep business, and yet other are
skilled in lining up a series of sweeps with clients who are being
pro-active instead of reactive. What throws a lot of people into a
tail-spin is when they lack the flexibility to perform both a pro-active
(high wire act) and a reactive sweep (trapeze act). Basically, the
healthiest of TSCM firms will have an even mix of both types of sweeps,
and to be flexible enough, and have the resources to handle
both.
17) A reactive sweeper tries to get the sweep only when the customer has
a problem. They usually work cheap, tend not to be trusted by the
customer as much as a pro-active sweeper, but can be nimble, and get to
the job site really quickly. Quite a few lone wolves can do this kind of
a sweep, and can do it with minimal equipment. But if you start asking
them technical questions about telephone wiring, the value of door
closer, Watergate tape, sheet rock compound, or carpentry they have no
answers. They usually quote the job on square feet, and like to come in
(usually sans ladders), blow though an area, collect a few hundred
dollars, and blow out within an afternoon. One or two briefcases of
equipment might get brought to the site, but it is rare for them to use
anything of great sophistication. Very often these folks actually work
for someone else during the daytime, and run a sweep business at night or
weekends to make a little money on the side.
18) The pro-active sweeper is a trusted advisor to their client, and is
often brought in to look over blue prints, advise of wiring methods, talk
about the value of latch guards, and helping the customer not develop a
problem in the first place. In addition, they will come in periodically
and check for bugs, but their biggest value to the customer is to help
keep secrets from leaking out in the first place, not locating the leak
once everybody is waist deep in water. Of course they can find any bug
after it has been placed, but their prime focus is in preventing
eavesdropping. A pro-active sweeper wants long term access to the
building far in advance of the customer ever needing a sweep, and will
prepare a list of vulnerabilities that need to be corrected prior to
initiating an actual sweep to render the future sweep more effective.
When a government person is performing a sweep this is usually the
posture that they assume, and their sweeps take days or weeks, for all
but the most urgent of situations. A pro-active sweep is slow, detail
oriented, documentation heavy, and absolutely obsessive attention to
detail that can involve taking 2-3 days to sweep a single room. They
usually quote a rate by the day, and not by the foot, and they tend to
perform sweeps or do sweep like things on a full time basis.
19) The hybrid sweeper is actually a pro-active sweeper who is capable to
an extremely fast response time to the project site, and who may bring a
huge amount of equipment to the scene, is equipped to blow in, perform a
really quick cursory inspection within the time they are given, but who
would really prefer to work at a much slower pace, and who will usually
recommend a much slower proactive inspection in the future. These are
sometimes called "tactical sweepers” and you will find that they
like to "get to know the building" long before the customer
ever needs to have a sweep performed. If a client hires one of these they
had better be sitting down when they read the report about how totally
screwed up their security and privacy is, because a tactical or hybrid
sweeper will let you know just exactly how bad it really is. The spy
fears a tactical sweeper as the sweeper can get into and out of the
building faster then the spy can detect the sweep about to be performed,
and certainly well before the spy can retrieve or deactivate any of their
bugs.
20) A strategic sweeper similar to a hybrid or tactical sweeper, and will
not only be coming in periodically to perform inspections, but will
actually coordinate with a client to build a safe-room near the area to
be protected and will allow several racks of equipment to be installed
into their roof in order to monitor the airwaves in the area, to keep
watch on the wires that may be on interest to the eavesdropper, to
monitor every milliamp that moves in the executive wiring, and who has
mapped every wire in every wall, and every inch of the ceiling, and where
nothing moves that could poise a threat to the customers privacy without
it getting logged somehow. This is the ultimate level of trust as sweeps
are actually taking place on a full time 7/24 basis by concealed
electronics, and with alarm systems, devices, and mechanisms designed not
only to detect a spy operating, but to do so on a full time basis, and to
do so covertly.
21) A "Yoda" sweeper is someone who is has been involved with
the customer from the first day the first drop of ink was laid down on
the first set of blueprints, and who was on hand for the duration of the
construction, and who very slowly, and very covertly swept every wire in
the building from the day it was first installed, knows everything that
there is to know about every signal on the airwaves in the area, has
spent hundreds of hours performing sweeps in the building, and quite
literally has their own master key to the building, and pretty much come
and go "as the force moves them"... The customer knows that
security is tight, and while they trust their internal security people to
maintain security, they depend on "Yoda" to identity potential
problems long before they become actual problems. This type of sweeper
does not ask for a budget to fix a problem (like the security department
will do), but rather tells the customer how much it will cost to not
resolve the problem, and will propose what can be done to mitigate the
risk or minimize the damage, and even how to turn the spies eavesdropping
against the spy. If this type of sweeper is extremely good at what they
do then only 2 or 3 people in the company will even have the slightest
idea that the company has a long term, high level relationship with
“Yoda”, and very often even less people will even know that the door in
the back of the closet behind the unused office that gets used by the
outside "accountant" who comes in every 90 days or so for a few
days to review the books prior to the SEC filing actually contains a half
million dollars of rack mounted sweep gear that runs 24 hours a day. The
employees also do not realize that every door of any kind on the certain
parts of the building have extremely carefully installed wires and
sensors, and that if so much as a grasshopper moves in the building that
it gets quietly logged, and a ghost automatically comes to visit the area
shortly afterwards. Most sweep people in this category on the one hand
tend be very fast to react when called, but must move in a carefully
choreographed dance that brings about the demise of the spy.
22) Some sweepers are also skilled equipment developers, engineers, and
computer programmers. This they are a scary prospect for the spy, and
sometimes such sweepers they are sometime jokingly referred to
"Frankenstein" because they can take a perfectly good piece of
equipment, drill all kind of holes in it, add all kinds of extra
circuits, and make it do things that the original manufacture never it to
be intended to used for. While they may use both conventional general
purpose test equipment AND TSCM specific test equipment, they can make
both do things that the spy is not expecting, and can operate pretty much
at will, and the spy will never know when or if they are around, and even
when they are around the spy will have no earthy idea what the sweeper is
up to because a significant amount of equipment has been so tweaked out
with modifications that it barely resembles what it was originally
intended for. It is not uncommon for this kind of sweeper to have
prototypes of equipment long before the models are even announced to the
public, and they are on top of the newest bug’s years before the very
first surveillance device using a certain technology is ever sold. They
predict what is going to be coming out 5 years from now, and they get
ready for it today. You will only find fully time people involved at this
level, and they are very expensive to engage, but they can find more
"stuff" with a ladder and flashlight then 20 lesser sweepers
with millions of dollars of equipment.
23) "Thunder and Lightning" referees to a sweeper who is both a
Yoda kind of sweeper, who is also a master at both the technical part of
the business, of the espionage and of the counter-espionage side of
things. Imagine for a moment that you are standing on a tall hill playing
golf with the sky above you heavy with dark cloud, in fact it is so dark
that you can barely see the golf ball as you try tin sink the putt. Next
to you stands your trusty caddy who holds your golf bag, providing tips
of how the greens play, and who holds a really, really tall metal stick
for you.... ZZZZZPPTTHHHH, CRACK, POW, ZZTTTT... Neither you nor
your caddy even see the giga-joule lightning bolt that not only connects
with the excellent lighting rod your caddy is holding, but also the one
that make the marrow in your bones, shoes, legs, arms and skull explode,
vaporize a fraction of a second before you sink the putt right at the
Pearly Gates. You didn't did not notice the clouds, did not hear the
thunder in the offing, did not check the weather reports, and your caddy
swore that the flashlight he was using to light up the green had nothing
to due with it being pitch black outside in the middle of the day. Thus
the spy (or in this case golfer) gets struck by lightning and is caught
completely be surprise to the point that he thinks that St. Peter is
trying to play through in the middle of his putt. The only thunder he
hears it the sound to his entire body exploding from the inside out as a
every water molecule in his body is instantly turned to steam. The spy
never sees the lightning, never hears the thunder, and may never even
know that he has been caught by the TSCM person until it is way too late.
This is the ultimate performance for a TSCM specialist because not only
did they catch the spy, but they did it without the spy ever knowing they
got caught. Thus the person who has employed a TSCM specialist of this
caliber pays a premium so that they can play the spy, feed the spy
incorrect information, deceive the spy, and work the spy against their
own masters as a double agent who does not even know that they are a
double agent. Nations fall, fortunes are lost (or made), and governments
are overthrown at this level. The spy fears this type of TSCM person more
then any other before this.
24) Then there is the unknown TSCM specialist, or the specialist that
plays the spy from the very beginning, tells no one of who their
customers are, brings as few as people as possible to any site, and other
works alone... on a trapeze, with no net... and is far, far more
dangerous to the spy then any others. If they can be like
"Yoda" and be underestimated by their opponent, and yet unleash
unexpected "Thunder and Lightning" against the spy they can
quietly amass a small fortune providing highly specialized TSCM services
to the more affluent for many decades.
Please excuse me if I sound like I am ranting, or babbling
again…
-jma
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James M.
Atkinson &=
nbsp; &nbs=
p;
Phone: (978) 546-3803
Granite Island
Group &nbs=
p;
Fax: (978) 546-9467
127 Eastern Avenue
#291 =
;
Web:
http://www.tscm.com/
Gloucester, MA
01931-8008 =
;
E-mail:
mailto:jm..._at_tscm.com<=
br>
&nb=
sp;
h=
ttp://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmatkinson
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No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the
enemy until it is ripe for execution. - Machiavelli, The Prince,
1521
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:26 CST