Executive Protection Begins with Digital Protection

On a hot summer night in 1973, Colonel Joe Alon, a decorated hero of the Israeli Air Force and the military attaché to the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. pulled into the driveway of his residence in Chevy Chase, Maryland, after returning from a going away party for a colleague.  His wife opened the passenger side door and headed into the house, when a lone-gunman stepped from the bushes from the driver’s side of the vehicle and fired several rounds into the diplomat, who was seated in the car.

As the victim fell onto the driveway, the assassin fled into a get-away car parked down the street and disappeared into the night.   After almost 40 years of investigation, I was able to determine that the assassin was a member of the notorious Black September Organization (BSO), who had also carried out the murder of the 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympics in Munich in 1972, that included the murder of two American diplomats at the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, also in 1973; along with the killing of Jordanian and Israelis around the globe.

In piecing the assassination together1, along with the range of other terror attacks which spanned the globe, I learned that the BSO had engaged in meticulous surveillance of their victims, long before the advent of the internet or any semblance of digital tools to assist a threat actor in planning an attack.

The world has changed since those days, making a few clicks of the keyboard the first step in the attack cycle, which is called “pre-operational surveillance,” a phrase my colleague Scott Stewart and I coined many years ago.  In order to stop an attack like the one in Chevy Chase, surveillance needs to be identified or spotted at the “pre-operational surveillance phase.”  Why?  Because once the shooter deploys to the attack venue, in all probability he/she will be successful, e.g., Mark David Chapman on the sidewalk outside of the Dakota Apartment building shooting John Lennon; Sirhan Sirhan in the hallway of the Ambassador Hotel killing Robert F. Kennedy; Carlos “the Jackal” at the door step of the Jewish CEO’s house in London; Timothy McVeigh driving the Ryder truck towards the federal building in Oklahoma City; John Hinckley outside the Hilton waiting for President Reagan; and most recently, Luigi Mangione trailing and killing the UHC CEO in New York City.

Historically, how were all of these operations successful?  Simply put, the threat actor was able to find their target via open-source publicly available information or digital breadcrumbs as we call them.

In dissecting the murder of the Israeli diplomat 50 years ago, operatives of the BSO had to first find the house where the victim lived, which was relatively easy because the Israeli diplomat was listed in the local telephone book, to include his home telephone number.2  As part of the attack cycle, the BSO surveillance team had to obtain a map and drive to the location in a non-alerting fashion, while putting together their attack plan and method of escape. 3 Finally, the team had to walk the neighborhood to get eyes on the venue for the hit and locate the easiest way to hide and each step in the process ran the risk of being spotted.  As I’ve learned over a lifetime of dissecting attacks, you have to be looking for surveillance in order to find it.  Training and awareness can help a great deal.

Let’s think about the ease of surveillance today. For example, target selection is made easy: Click on any address and bring up Google Earth to remotely surveil your intended target in a non-alerting fashion, unless you have your home address blacked out as I do. From a threat actor’s perspective in putting together a targeting profile, routine social media searches bring up information of tremendous value, to include real estate photos, family pictures, work history, vacation homes, pets, likes and dislikes, clubs and associations.

Thus, the first step of pre-operational surveillance can easily be done before you deploy a surveillance operative to “eyeball” or follow a potential target.  The deployment phase is where he/she could be vulnerable to technology security solutions like license plate readers, image matching, facial recognition, and observant neighbors or an executive protection counter-surveillance team.  In fact, in one past high-profile kidnapping that I’ve studied, the bad guys identified multiple targets in a geographic area before conducting the street surveillance work to finalize their plans and to identify the most “unaware” victim.   It’s easy to follow someone if the target is not practicing good situational awareness or conducting surveillance detection routes, which were hard lessons we learned in the 1970s and 1980s.

So, how does one minimize their digital “exhaust” to make it hard for a threat actor to find you?  It’s relatively simple, but easier said than done.  Why is that?   In today’s social media driven world, it’s tough not having a digital presence for a range of social and work obligations.  If you are an executive of a company, marketing will want to promote you.  If you belong to any community group, photos will be taken.  Even if you take measures to minimize your own exhaust or presence, your kids or significant other could be posting on X or Instagram.

As someone who has been engaged in the study and application of protective intelligence since 1981, minimizing your digital footprint is the first step in modern day executive protection.  In fact, without digital privacy protection, you have created your own intelligence gap which can be easily exploited by a range of threat actors and paparazzi.

Protection history with tragic results is littered with examples of stalkers, assassins and kidnappers taking advantage of the information publicly available on your residence, social life, public events, or family.  Take steps now to minimize that vulnerability.

More information is available at https://www.360privacy.io/

Written by Fred Burton.
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