On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 5:17 PM jim bell <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thursday, February 28, 2019, 12:16:48 PM PST, Punk <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 09:15:51 +1000 > [email protected] wrote: > > >> If you are in the city, everything is on CCTV. But you are not going to > >> drop something valuable in the middle of the city. > > > Yet the majority of customers live in the city. Also, surveillance in > the city means surveillance when you enter and leave the city. > > Depends very much on the city. In the big (relatively) city closest to me, > Portland Oregon, there are many hundreds of streets that 'leave the city'. > Sure, they could all be camera'd, but what good would that do? The pictures > could be stored, and would be, but how could it be known if any specific > frame represents a "useful" image? > > Eventually, some kind of AI could be developed, but I doubt whether this > would find most activities which would be useful to identify. Placing or > retrieving a dead-drop would be one of the most undetectable events that > could occur: Drive to a block, get out, walk around in a large grassy area, > bend over, pick up something, walk away, drive away. How much video of this > would surveillance have to catch to determine that the person surveilled was > doing something suspicious...particularly if they didn't already know > something was going on. > > This reminds me that 23 years ago, I first learned about "3M Louvered Film", > > https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/industrial-manufacturing-us/display-enhancement-and-protection-films-industrial-manufacturing/light-control-films/ > a plastic sheet product that prevents viewing at angles greater than a > pre-defined amount. It's now generically available. > https://www.shinetsu.info/vc_film > > This stuff could be placed over a car's license plate, so that a camera well > above (or to the side, or both) couldn't read the plate. > To be sure, that's not necessarily an unmixed blessing. While it effectively > makes a car look like it doesn't have a (readable) license plate, that in > itself might be considered suspicious. > > A few weeks ago, I realized that cemeteries would be excellent locations for > placing dead-drops. (no pun intended, but I'll take what I can get !). > There are few people who visit cemeteries, but the idea of a person visiting > a grave is very plausible. And, some amount of 'searching' is to be > expected, so it doesn't look suspicious. Further, there are plenty of > gravestones which can be used as markers for the placement and retrieval of > those dead-drops, even more precisely than WAAS GPS or L1+L5 GPS. > > The war continues. > > Jim Bell
Riffing a bit on the cemeteries: Pick a famous grave near you - some recently deceased celebrity, say Jim Morrison (as opposed to an ancient celebrity, such as US Grant) that attracts a lot of people. And, FWIW, there's a fair amount of tradecraft shown in The Americans, a pretty good TV series set in the '80s. Kurt
