A recent article about a woman jailed for letting her kids play outside got me thinking about OPSEC. In this story, a Texas 
mother was jailed for letting her kids play outside supervised. Hmm, I thought. Were they on a busy main street or in a bad section of town? Were the kids four or five years old? Was she inside drunk or stoned on some crazy new drug? Turns out it wasn’t any of those things. They live on a street with a cul-de-sac, the kids were six and nine years old, and and the mom was there on there watching them play.
The neighbor called the cops and reported they were outside playing on motorized scooters unsupervised.The cops showed up and put her behind bars overnight. Wow. You don’t need to worry about big brother when you have nosy neighbors. All it took was one phone call from a neighbor and off to jail she went. If that isn’t scary I don’t know what is.
The main points I’m trying to make here (despite the ridiculousness of this situation) are that
1.) People are watching you even when you think they aren’t.
2.) They are making judgments about your activities.
3.) Right or wrong they have the ability to blow your careful plans out of the water with one phone call to the authorities.
Imagine what your neighbors would think if you suddenly showed up with a truckload of groceries, a bunch of guns and ammo, and other gear a “common” prepper (if there is such a creature) might have in their house, and started lugging it all down into the cellar, or up to their apartment, or whatever.
Now, my neighbors are pretty good people. Everybody has guns. All of them have lots of food on hand. Not because they prep, 
but because they live on farms or simply because we live a little way off the beaten path and it makes sense to have a little food on hand in case the pow. But awhile back I had some wood pellets delivered for my stove and I was sure not a single neighbor noticed the truck pull into my yard and drop the pellets into my pickup truck as it was very early on a Saturday. er goes out.
However, over the next couple of days as I came across the folks in the neighborhood (all seven of them) they asked questions like, “What are you building?” or “Getting ready for winter?” and other comments like that. Every one of them noticed that truck come in and came up with their own idea of what I was doing. And these aren’t what I would consider nosey folks, either. They just happened to see the truck and were curious about what I was doing.
Anyway, it’s stories like these that make me re-think the fact that nobody is watching. Everybody is watching. I can get on Google Maps and look at my house, see the deck and camper, and everything in my yard. It’s cool, but it’s also freaky at the same time. Now, we all know how to practice good OPSEC, but do we? Do you practice good OPSEC?
-Jarhead Survivor
21 comments
OPSEC?
probably a lost cause in my case.
yeh, what Jason said: I’m hiding in plain sight.
(that’s the ticket..)
Anyone who has lived under Communism can tell similar stories to the one in this article. Marx/Obama=slavery
Try to get all our shopping done at o dark hundred before the sheep neighbors wake up.
Thats when you buy an oz of coke and put it in your neighbors car . then call the cops with a tip ……..they get poped for possession .
LMAO!
Good point and well taken Jarhead…
My husband has blown mine. He has told several people about our food stores. Thankfully no one knows how much ammo we have because he doesn’t.
Equality of Opportunity: It’s the law.
blabbing is not just for women anymore…
@JL
Don’t feel too bad, I can’t go into the details due to Comsec but it happened to me as well, by close family member to his crew of all levels of LEO’s.
I negated by removing all stores (wink-wink) and will just smoke a pistol if the SHTF. Yeah, about that… lol
Have heightened my search for new BOL in MT though.
we live in the sticks too and since its not a well traveled road( it actually dead ends in my yard) any traffic on the road instantly draws a few looks. Everybody knows the UPS driver by name as well as the mailman. It works both ways….anything unusual and a neighbor will call to check up on you.
Ya know, the whole FedEx/UPS thing is a conundrum as well. My regular drivers know how much “goods” I get every month as well as where they come from ( address and crappy Opsec by many of the companies like EE, who print it on their boxes, yes, I know to ask to box properly now).
So if I get a couple of cases of this or that on occasion, it really isn’t a big deal I suppose. However, if I’m getting a 20, 30 or even 60 case load, I get it “Will Call” and pick it up at the facility. Not easy to do online so it often entails calling the company and getting the “Will call” thing worked out before hand.
If a delivery driver wanted to be a raider, they would be in the perfect position to know who stored what and how much as well as layout and so forth. I don’t worry about mine much but it should be kept in mind.
Well done SHTF:
I have been in thecrisis management community for decades and have never seen the ominous and sinister conditions that we are currently confronted with.
Be aware and prepare!
Respectfully, Yoda
“Government Grabbing Your Guns” http://www.magnifiedview.com
I’ve always been surprised by how many people in my neighborhood leave their garage doors open a lot. It’s pretty easy to see who has what.
My garage is narrow and deep, so a little over a year ago I walled off the back third and turned it into a tool and prep storage area. It keeps everything organized, out of sight and there’s one more door you have to go through to get to “the good stuff.”
I’ve also swapped out all my door knobs for ones that lock with a key. For now I keep everything unlocked and they wouldn’t stop a determined thief, but I can keep the curious locked out of a room if I want to.
I live in a urbanized area, have learned how to hide in plain sight & it is pretty easy. I drive a non de-script car, dress like the natives but don’t sag & have built my food stores by shopping every other day or three & bring in the couple of bags like it was a normal run thing I do.
What bothered me most about the referenced Texas woman’s story about having kids supposedly playing unsupervised is that growing trend & assumption of being assumed guilty first. Nearly 90% of the parents in my neighborhood would be arrested by those standards.
My 7 year old plays for hours on end in my cul-de-sac with about 8-9 other kids & they have a blast playing football, tetherball, riding bikes, skateboards & more. I made it a point to meet every parent of the kids & meet most of my neighbors because I want to live in a village where we all look out for one another. You’d be surprised how much a $5 pizza from Little Caesars buys in the way of bonding.
When did it become illegal for kids to play out side. Another example of TEOTWAWKI. When I grew up we ran all day from yard to yard. We played ball, hide and seek, army, cowpersons and native americans, swam, fished, built tree forts. There were adults around. We could go to a neighbors house if there was a problem. They would also offer us lemonade and cookies. No one called the cops.
Where I come from people keep to themselves, although there is a bit of front porch speculating (gossip). At the same time if you need help everyone has your back. Three guys in a pick-up truck and a chain beat AAA every time.
However, like Jason says we hide in plain site.
That being said, I do drop a ‘fishing line’ now and then to encourage people to prep. One of the best OPSEC exercises IMO is encouraging neighbors and communities to prep.
When I was 8, my mom used to drop me & 3 friends off at the beach, tell us to hang out by the lifeguard tower & come pick us up 5 hours later (50 years ago). That was not considered unusual at all in fact, sometimes we’d walk to the beach which was 7 miles. Can you imagine the reaction today?? Mom would be in prison serving 20 years & on the cover of People Magazine ….
Seems the cops have gone nuts of late.They have allways been intolerant in that part of Texas. But lately they have been down right crazy. A cop here in Ky went off on an active duty solder the other day cause he didn’t like his walk. (the GI was at the mall) I don’t think a day has gone by for weeks without a story about the cops killing an unarmed man/woman. Now there is talk about pemenant checkpoints on the roads. Don’t even try to wittness whats going on ,you could take a beatdown. I Kinda wonder when the order to ignore the train cars full of people will come down.
The worse thing we can do for OSPEC is our mouths! Make sure when discussing our preps it is with like minded people, the ones that you will surround yourself with when it gets crazy. Stop bragging about how much you have our your latest gun buy with everyone. Don’t buy a million rounds of ammunition, talk about drawing attention. I buy a box here and there from all different stores doesn’t take long to add up. Use your head and just how your nosy neighbors watch you turn about is fair play. Pay attention!!
I sure hope that the woman had a video camera on hand! Hopefully it got thrown out of court as soon as she went to advisory on it, however I would like to point out that it’s probably not the cop’s fault. Unfortunately cops are forced to enforce some stupid rules and then take the heat for it, at least from what I’ve seen. Best OPSEC in an urban area I can think of is to keep everything in the house, maybe even in the attic? Helps in Florida where we can get flooded by hurricanes. Or if something’s outside, it goes in a locked shed.
Opsec locally is secure, only family and friends who prep, but worry about all the stuff I’ve it online over time. Not so much the average Joe, as big brother. . .