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Security / Re: [intel] informants, surveillance and undercover operations
« on: March 06, 2012, 02:38 pm »
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(1) SHORT-TERM (use storefront or apartment)
(2) LONG-TERM (use rooftop or rented dwelling)
II. MOVING (aka TAIL OR SHADOW, uses CONCEALABLE CAMERA, RADIO ALWAYS)
A. FOOT (best to use leapfrogging teams to throw off suspect, always carry something)
B. VEHICLE (works best if combined with bumper beeper)
III. AUDIO (aka WIRETAPPING OR ELECTRONIC EAVESDROPPING)
A. TELEPHONE (tap at any of 4 locations: house, area, main, or bays of central offices)
B. PEN REGISTER (record of outgoing calls, requires less probable cause)
C. TRAP-AND-TRACE (record of incoming calls, requires less probable cause)
D. "BUGGING" OF PREMISES (if both surveillance and surreptitious entry approved)
E. CONSENSUAL (using undercover tactic/accomplice-witness)
IV. CONTACT (aka TRACERS, DYE STAINS--fluorescent stains)
Preparation is key to a successful surveillance, regardless of type. Learn all you can about your subject and the neighborhoods in which you will be operating in. Whenever possible, target information should be individualized, including who the associates are of your main target. If at all possible, it is a good idea to make a thorough RECONNAISSANCE of the areas in which you plan to conduct the surveillance to try to spot any known criminals who are operating in the area. Familiarize yourself with the geography of the area. Learn the names and locations of streets, alleys and passage ways. Observe traffic conditions. Form a mental picture of where various buildings are located.
Effective surveillance requires TEAMWORK. A clear chain of command must be established, and every officer must fully understand what is expected. Everyone involved should be briefed about the operation and any special hazards or problems should be anticipated. Knowledge of a surveillance operation in progress should be kept secret, but it is often useful to notify other authorities in the area so that suspicious person reports are avoided and two or more ongoing law enforcement operations do not bump into one another. Some experts argue that it takes the resources of twelve operators and six vehicles to put one ordinary individual under effective 24-hour physical surveillance.
Select the best OBSERVATION POST by studying a large scale map of the area, combined with your reconnaissance. The map will allow you to check the angles of view from different locations. When no adequate indoor observation post is available, set one up outdoors. Personnel may pose as repairmen, street vendors, or other such people who would not arouse suspicion. Sometimes cars and trucks can provide cover. Indoor posts, however, permit the most use of equipment, such as spotting scopes, cameras, and recording devices. All personnel at an observation post should have cover stories.
MOVING SURVEILLANCE is complex and offers the chance of surprise. It makes heavy demands on resourcefulness. This is where blending into the environment is most important. Officers should carry extra items such as a hat, glasses, and a raincoat to permit changes of appearance. Remember to carry loose coins and small bills so you can pay exact fare rather than wait for change, and to carry pen and paper to leave a note when necessary. Sometimes, it will be necessary to develop a set of signals that can be used on the street without tipping off the suspect. Such things as how a newspaper is carried or the way clothing is worn works well for this.
On FOOT, a suspect can easily shake off a single follower without too much trouble. If you must follow a subject alone, it is best to stay close behind and keep the subject in sight at all times. When foot traffic is light, it may be best to cross to the other side of the street which is less likely to attract attention from the subject. Be on the lookout for any confederates of the subject as they may be watching to see if he/she is being followed. They may also be waiting to ambush you. Avoid the obvious giveaways: never peek over a newspaper, never sneak peeks from around a doorway. Avoid catching anybody's eye. Be confident. Your own mistaken belief that you have been spotted is more likely to give you away than anything else. If the subject speaks to you, treat him/her as you would any other stranger who did the same thing. If they accuse you of following them, deny it strongly, and say you think they have a mental problem. If you are ever forced to abandon a surveillance, don't return immediately to your office. The subject or a confederate may be following you.
In two-officer foot surveillance, some of the best tactics are to have one officer in front of the subject and another following from behind. Two officers can also LEAPFROG a suspect. In this method, one officer follows while the other moves well ahead, usually on the opposite sidewalk. At some point, the lead officer stops and waits for the subject to catch up with him. When the subject passes, the lead officer moves in behind while the backup officer moves ahead and becomes the lead officer.
VEHICLES used for surveillance should be as unobtrusive as possible. Aerials, communications gear, and other equipment should not be visible. Headlights should be wired separately so the car appears differently at night. In city traffic, the best plan is to stay one or two cars behind the subject and far enough to the right so that the subject is not likely to notice you in a rearview mirror. In rural areas, you must lie further back and know the terrain. Two vehicles can also use the leapfrog technique.
A three-officer or three vehicle tactic is called the ABC method. This allows the officers to change places from time to time, and cuts down on the risk of losing a subject. In foot surveillance, officer C is called the "rover" and walks along the opposite side of the street. In vehicle surveillance, officer C might be the plainclothes "jumper" who can get out of the car and blend into the foot environment easily. In important cases where it is worth using more than two cars, the PERIMETER-BOX technique provides maximum security while minimizing the risk of detection. One car follows the subject, another leads, and another two maintain positions on parallel routes. Coordination is handled by radio. This works well in both urban and rural areas.
Some of the things a subject will do to evade you include: trying to get lost in a crowd, boarding a bus just as it is about to leave, and entering a building by one door and leaving by another. Smarter subjects will go up to a uniformed officer and point you out as someone who is following them. If the officer delays you, the subject slips away; and if the officer lets you go, the subject knows that you are an officer too. Another trick is when the subject drops a worthless piece of scrap paper to see if you pick it up. A variation on this is when the subject goes up to a passerby, shows him or her an address on a piece of paper, and asks directions. The subject tries hard to make this innocent contact look like a suspicious transaction, and then watches to see if the passerby arouses suspicion and/or is followed. Almost any erratic behavior may be an attempt at evasion. The subject may drive down a one-way street the wrong way or make an illegal U-turn to see if you are determined enough to follow him. If your suspect goes into a building to lose you, take out some fluorescent powder and rub it on your shoes. This way, your backup can track you if they have to. Otherwise, use your portable radio. At least one officer should stay in the lobby of the building, and other officers should cover as many exits as possible. If the subject takes an elevator, watch the indicator. Where the car stops, try to pick up the trail on that floor. If the suspect checks into a hotel, get the room number from the clerk and a record of outgoing phone calls. If the subject goes into a theater, race track, or ball park, the lead officer should attempt to sit right behind the subject. The same applies to bus rides, trolley, or subway. If you can't get in the vehicle with the subject, record the license number, company, place and time. The taxicab company will tell you the destination. If the subject goes into a restaurant, try to finish your meal first and pay your check shortly before the subject leaves. If you suspect loses you in their own vehicle, when you catch up with the suspect again, feel the radiator to see if it's still warm. Also try to read the mileage both before and after a trip. Helicopter support is ideal for this, but many departments restrict usage to rundown situations. If you lose your suspect, don't feel ashamed. They have more ways to lose you than you have ways to keep up. Just try to find the suspect again. Check the home and business address. Use pretext phone calls to family, friends, associates. Station an officer at the point where the suspect was last seen.
REPORTS are especially important in surveillance operations. Each member of the team will have different facts, and these must be correlated to make a complete report. Reports should be detailed. Little things like discarding a matchbook are worth noting. Although your joint report should have differences between officers ironed out, it is OK to have differences of opinion in the report if they can't be reconciled. It is better to have too much information than to omit something that may be significant.
LAWS REGARDING THE USE OF SURVEILLANCE & WIRETAPPING
Courts have always recognized surveillance as slightly un-American, but ever since Olmstead v. U.S. (1928), they have been attuned with public opinion that there are some times and places where privacy cannot be expected. This changed with Katz v. U.S. in 1967 to a person-based conception of privacy, meaning that privacy exists when and where a person makes reasonable efforts to maintain it (reasonable expectation of privacy doctrine). Also in 1967, the Court ruled that telephone surveillance was technically a "search" and by 1972, the Court was ruling that every single phone and wire tap needed prior judicial approval (although the government continued NOT seeking court orders when international communications were involved, on grounds that constitutional protections did not apply in these cases). In 2001, with Kyllo v. U.S., the Court took another step at protecting domestic privacy, by banning police use of thermal imaging systems (and all future technology of that kind) on private residences.
Ex parte and other court orders are required for any and all monitoring of conversations. An ex parte order is good for only a short amount of time, and usually contains a minimizing requirement, which means that officers must cease their eavesdropping or spying as soon as the criminal activity related to the investigation stops. They can turn their surveillance back on once the criminal activity starts up again. Title III of the 1968 Omnibus crime bill still stands as requiring police to exhaust all other options before even thinking about surveillance. A variety of other restrictions exist at the constitutional, statutory, and local levels.
The Title III standard is probable cause (a crime has been or is about to be committed). Title III did not adequately cover national security electronic surveillance, however. That was addressed in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which set up a special review court in Washington D.C., and made the standard a proportionality test (the benefits of surveillance outweigh the harms). Current judicial doctrine also stresses the exhaustion test (standard investigatory methods have been exhausted, failed, are reasonably likely to fail, or are too dangerous to try). Concerns about national security and domestic spying generally involve discussions of the FISA (1978) law and also the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). CALEA is for domestic wiretaps and FISA is for international wiretaps. Each law requires a report to Congress every year, and each law requires a court order for every tap, although under FISA there is some leeway, including the possibility of getting court orders retroactively.
Computer surveillance has some special regulations. In 1986, Congress passed the Electronics Communications Privacy Act, which provides both civil and criminal penalties for violating Title III provisions. Subsequent legislation dealt with appropriation requests by the FBI (circa 1999) to install Clipper Chips on all newly manufactured computers, and then there was Homeland Security's 2002 plan to implement Total Information Awareness by scanning all networked computers. The FBI managed to get approval in 2000 for CARNIVORE, which consists of boxes temporarily attached to the servers of recalcitrant Internet Service Providers (ISPs) which capture the header information from e-mail addresses of interest. Great Britain's Regulatory Investigative Powers (RIP) bill allows similar machines to be permanently affixed to ISP servers, and that nation has also relied heavily upon fixed video surveillance by planting Closed Circuit Television cameras (CCTV) at places appropriate for monitoring populations of interest. Facial recognition systems are often used in conjunction with this type of surveillance. Roving wiretaps, which follow the person and not the equipment, and is an important consideration in the age of disposable cell phones and e-mail addresses, have been used since 1998. The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is prohibited by law from domestic surveillance, so its ESCHELON program cannot be used to intercept electronic transmissions by citizens unless foreign traffic is involved or one of the foreign nations in an exchange agreement does it.
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